“You can lead a horse to water,” the saying goes, “but you can’t make him drink,” The best human learning is a lot like horse’s drinking. The horse won’t drink until he’s ready. The best human learning happens the same way. People learn best when they’re ready.
Last weekend the air conditioner at our daughter’s house began producing oceans of water. My son-in-law, Chris, did a little web research, diagnosed the problem, watched a video on YouTube to learn how to fix it, and then fixed it. Chris never took a course in air conditioner repair. Up until the moment when the drip pan began to overflow, he never gave a thought to HVAC diagnostics, either.
When Chris was ready to learn how to diagnose and fix his air conditioner, he could do it easily and quickly. That’s how learning in our organizations needs to happen in our fast-moving world. You can’t have learning organizations without learning people. And you can’t have learning people without readily-available resources.
For centuries, there are have been two primary ways of getting knowledge from one head to another and skills from one pair of hands to another. There was shoulder-to-shoulder learning in apprentice programs and on-the-job learning. And there were classes.
Organizations love classes. They’re scheduled at the convenience of the organization. They give the illusion of efficiency. The problem is that too many classes are pretty much like a Medieval university, with one person talking (or reading PowerPoint slides) and the rest taking notes or napping. That won’t cut it anymore.
You may not agree completely with Harold Jarche that “Work is learning and learning is the work.” Just realize that the key word in that phrase is “learning” and not “teaching.” The companies who will become true learning organizations are the ones who will look through the learning lens at what people need and when. Then they’ll make sure the resources are available.
In the old days, we led our horses to water when it was convenient for us and then hoped they’d drink. Today, we need to be making sure that the water for horses is available and easy to find, everywhere and all the time.
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[…] Wally’s Comment: In this post. David Mallon and Janet Clarey do a superb job of laying out who’s doing what and how companies, individuals, and universities may interact in the future. I posted on a related topic here earlier in the week with “Horses, water, and learning.” […]