Episode 11: From Static Knowledge to Dynamic Learning
Peter Senge persuasively introduced the idea of the "learning organization" that constantly transforms itself. What exactly is required to be in a state where ongoing, quality learning is the norm?
Marti and Todd explore conditions for learning, why we need to use our hands and bodies, the underlying principles of apprenticeship, how principles guide us more than facts, and why we need to break our addiction to static knowledge. Learning from experience in a state of open awareness - this is the nature of dynamic learning.
From the Edge: From Systems to Ecosystems (Marti)
Conscious Rant: 15 Steps to Enlightenment (Todd)
Timeline
2:36 The limitations of object-oriented / static knowledge
3:23 Organizational training in static knowledge
4:33 The process of “coming to know”
7:10 The importance of context and meaning
10:19 Neural pathways
12:21 Brain as mapmaker
13:27 Learning as an apprentice
16:49 Underlying principles of learning in apprenticing
19:45 Training in awareness
20:53 Teaching principles
25:11 Getting physical - learning with the body
26:45 Deep neuronal connections
29:03 Losing the dimensionality of our learning
31:25 The temptation of the “dashboard”
33:50 Learning with immersion
36:15 Extracting knowledge
36:56 Tom Brown Jr. and awareness
41:18 Human babies know how to learn
42:08 Being data-driven
43:01 Why dynamic data scares us
44:43 From the Edge: From Systems to Ecosystems (Marti)
46:26 Conscious Rant: 15 Steps to Enlightenment (Todd)
Quotes
“Without learning as a species, as a community, or as an individual, we die. What both keeps us alive as individuals, cultures, and organizations — and enhances our vitality — is our capacity to learn and adapt. If organizations don't learn and adapt, they die too.” — Todd Hoskins
“A learning organization, or a responsive organization, is interested in object-oriented knowledge, and they realize that in order to continually adapt, they need to also focus on a larger set of data that is dynamic.” — Todd Hoskins
“Our Western drive to categorize is amazing.” — Todd Hoskins
“We need leaders who are able to see and sense the whole system – the sets of relationships that sustain life – and make choices based on what will serve the whole system.” — Todd Hoskins
“So for leaders, our focus becomes less about capturing knowledge and more about creating the best possible conditions for a team or organization to be in this mode of learning.” — Todd Hoskins
“When we focus on the conditions for learning rather than the transmission of static knowledge, we become more alive, more creative, and more responsive.” — Todd Hoskins
“When I'm working in South America, the masters are always looking at Western people and saying, don't forget what you already know.” — Marti Spiegelman
“It's not just facts. It's not just data. It's the principles that organize the data of our world into usable maps and usable action and usable vision.” — Marti Spiegelman
“You have to be playing with mud and clay and banging nails into boards and swinging on on jungle gyms and learning how to tap dance, because that neuronal feedback is what wires the brain deeply.” — Marti Spiegelman
“We are losing connection to the dimensionality of our world. We're getting down to one and two dimensions most days. It's really affecting our capacity to learn. I think it's affecting what we recognize as knowledge — it's preventing us from remembering what we already know.” — Marti Spiegelman
“Data is informing us — and we try to control it instead of realizing that we're being informed.” — Marti Spiegelman
“Every organization is data-driven. Of course you’re data-driven — we all are. Let's look at some different types of data.” — Todd Hoskins
“When we talk about leading from being, we're not talking about one individual at the head of one single organization or team. We're talking about systems, about interrelationships. We're talking about the core ways that the whole living system focuses flows of energy and information.” — Marti Spiegelman
“In indigenous cultures an elder is likely to ask a Western person, ‘Are you looking for a definition? Or an experience?’ They can see that we are constantly stepping outside our own experience to try to describe it or define it, and we end up mistaking that definition for the direct experience we just had . . . we can actually mistake the definition for knowledge.” — Marti Spiegelman
“Analyzing a situation or experience might bring up useful insights but that is an outcome of what we’ve already learned. It’s a far cry from being awake and participating in the actual experience in real time.” — Marti Spiegelman
“Our challenge as leaders is not to explain — it is to steward our participation as members of living systems.” — Marti Spiegelman
“Everything we know has come to us from the universe around us, through our direct sensory experience, and it has shaped us. All that is yet to be known is on its way, coming toward us, looking to inform us, and eager to fuel the unique creative skills that humans can bring to living systems for thriving. This is an open-ended process that demands not only our presence and participation, but our willingness to live and learn within the system of life, as members of the greater whole, never again stepping outside the system to make do with a diminished view of life.” — Marti Spiegelman
“It’s not a terrible idea to read about the ‘21 steps to becoming a fearless leader.’ Just know that what is being written is not taking into account your context, or your unique gifts, or your experience. It can provide inspiration, but probably not instruction.” — Todd Hoskins