I know this may reflect poorly on my sophistication, but I love the poems of Rudyard Kipling. One of my favorites is “The Mary Gloster.” It’s very long, but great for reading aloud. My daughters will remember it from when I read them poems before bedtime.
The poem is presented as the words of an old shipping tycoon, Sir Anthony Gloster. Sir Anthony is dying after a fabulously successful life and he offers advice to his ne’er-do-well son.
Sir Anthony sums up the reasons for his success with the following wonderful words.
“They copied all they could follow, but they couldn’t copy my mind,
And I left ’em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind.”
That’s good advice for us, today. You can’t stay ahead by just doing what others do well. You can only stay ahead with minds that the competition can’t copy. Here are some things you can do to make sure your people have minds like that.
Help people learn to scan broadly, spot important information, and drill down quickly. It’s the only way to get value from a variety of rushing steams of information.
Help people learn to evaluate information sources. Finding information gold is like finding real gold. Once you find a good vein, you can always go back for more.
Help people learn to use tools and sources that aren’t electronic. Your brain is a powerful source of information. So are the brains of other people. Learn to use conversation as an information mining tool.
Help people learn proven techniques of problem solving and innovation. The schools don’t teach this, so you have to.
Two decades ago, Peter Senge began telling us about learning organizations. But the fact is that organizations don’t learn unless people learn. And people sometimes need help learning to learn.
