Learning On The Job

Are you someone with 20 years of experience?

Or, are you someone who has recreated 1 year of experience twenty times?

Confused?

Let me ask it another way, can you really claim that you have been constantly learning and adding to your knowledge-base and skills throughout your career?

Or did the learning stop sometime in the distant past, and you've been in cruise mode - for as long as you remember?

What is experience, and how does it contribute to your personal growth and career success?

This is one of the many questions that well known corporate leader and best-selling author Chandramouli Venkatesan deals with in Catalyst: The ultimate strategies on how to win at work and in life

While experience is one of the foundational drivers for growth and success, Chandramouli makes it clear that time spent at work does not equal experience. 

In his words

And performing activities repeatedly is also not learning.

It is the presence of a learning model as a catalyst that makes the activity (and the time spent on it ) experience.

Chandramouli invokes the metaphor of an algorithm to explain experience. 

In his frame, your experience is the quality or effectiveness  of your algorithm : the more experienced person is one whose algorithm is stronger, not necessarily one who has spent more years, or done more of the activity.

How does one convert time into experience? 

With a robust learning model. And the model that Chandramouli recommends is TMRR : Target, Measure, Review & Reflection. 

The model is simple and easy to understand. However, just because you understand how to do something does not mean you actually do it. 

And that is what separates those who are successful from those who aren't.

In many companies, the first three elements of TMRR (Target, Measure, Review) are usually baked into all key processes.

Even where there is a good and functional process that takes care of these three elements, Chandramouli suggests you should have your own  personal process for learning - because the corporate process is focused on what is relevant for the organization as a whole.

The objective of the corporate learning process is organizational experience building. 

Assuming they buy into the idea of a personal learning model, most leaders still find it difficult to effectively incorporate the fourth element of TMRR - Reflection. 

Yet, as numerous studies have shown, reflection is key to solidifying what you learn and building on it. 

If you are familiar with the 70-20-10 model of adult learning, the 70% is about actually performing the work, and the 10% is reading about it or taking a course or attending a workshop. 

What is often missed is the 20% - which to simplify again, is engaging in dialogue about it. 

When the dialogue is with someone who has done it before, and is about drawing useful insights from their experience, it is Mentoring. 

When the dialogue is with ourselves, looking at our own experience and drawing insights from it, it is Reflection. 

And when this dialogue with ourselves is facilitated by someone else, it is Coaching.

Labels apart, the key takeaway is:  to integrate your learning and grow your capability (improve your algorithm), you must incorporate the 4th element of TMRR : Reflection. 

And Chandramouli offers a simple but powerful way of incorporating reflection in your daily life. He wants you to ask yourself a very specific question : 

"What could I have done better?"

The book has much more to offer. Chandramouli touches upon topics such as Learning Cycles, Personal Productivity, Winning where it matters, the role of mentors, the importance of values, and benefits of having a "passionate striving hobby".

I will cover some of these in future, but if you are serious about personal growth and wish to take more ownership for your success, I strongly recommend you buy and read this excellent book. 

Here are the links* : Paperback; E book; Audio Book

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