Right now, your competition…
There isn’t a lot that I’d claim to remember from my school days. Even less from the lesson that seemed to have many names but ended up as Physical, Social and Health Education. However, one phase stuck with me — “you don’t have to blow my candle out to make yours shine brighter”. I doubt it will be long before younger readers will wonder what a candle is!
Today that phrase is better understood in the context of the work popularised by Simon Sinek in The Infinite Game. Despite the polarisation of views and a culture that promotes a zero-sum game (you win, I lose) the reality is (as I prove I did pay attention in some lessons) as said by Shakespeare: “the world’s a stage, and all the men and women are merely players…”
But what does this have with #LAWW and facing the competition? Several weeks ago someone mentioned the tagline used by a former college is “right now your competition is training”.
Since then, I’ve been pondering those words. Generally, I’m not concerned about what the competition is doing. Yes, it can be useful to know and insight into others is opportunity to learn, but you run the risk of living life looking in the mirror and focusing on the “me to” race. My preference is to highlight the benefits I, or the company I work for, bring to a solution.
But the phrase bothered me. And so here are some musings for you to finishing this week of blog posts on the future and its relationship with learning.
I do also appreciate that my slight obsession with the meaning of words and context is the overriding factor at play here!
Right now, your competition is…
There is something implied here. That those you compete with are doing something that you aren’t doing. It’s easy to think that because someone else is doing it, then you should do as well. We see that in many aspects of life. The desire to fit in, to be following the fashion, to know the latest trends. That’s what drives our #FOMO (fear of missing out) and obsession with being involved. But is that healthy? It is easy to fall into a trap of continually pursuing the next thing without evaluating its benefit to us.
Training is good. You’d expect me to say that (and that’s without exploring the differences between training and learning!) But not all training is equal. Matthew Syed (and others) speak about the 10,000 hours approach — but it isn’t just 10,000 hours, it’s about the way you use that time to tackle the specific challenges of the discipline. Don’t let training be like digging a hole: it doesn’t matter how much digging you do, you’ll still only have a hole! Rather, think about the training needs that exist and what is the best approach to meeting that need.
What is worth remembering is that your competition is doing something. If you stand still, then the reality is you’re going backwards.
Training is your competition…
This is another way that phase can be understood. I’m a firm believer that you can (nearly) always find the time to do the things you want to do. Obviously, time is finite (that’s why I’ve +70 books waiting to be read!) but deliberately or otherwise we do end up prioritising the things that are most important to us.
Training is competing with many other things. The need to improve and develop need skills is in competition to that never ending jobs list we curate. If you’ve not come across the axe sharpening story then have a read — here’s just one example of it being told: https://screeble.com/blog/2017/03/07/story-of-two-woodcutters/. Training and busyness compete, and we need to get that balance right.
Training to compete
The final version of thoughts explores how we think about training. Einstein is quoted as having said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” Just as we can become too busy to pause and think about how we can become better at the jobs we have to do, we can also become too desperate to get to the event that we miss out the steps to get us there. Whether you think we’re living in a changing world, one we call VUCA or BANI (or some other descriptor) the reality is we need to be building skills which are not directly applicable to the challenges we face.
It took a while (3 years in fact) to get to the point where I enjoyed the academic study that was offered by my university degree. Many of my peers simply wanted to be told what they needed to get a job and earn money. There is a tendency to place too much emphasis on the specific knowledge or skill needed to perform a task and not develop the enabling competencies that we require to adapt and change. It may be an excuse for a traditional leaning but it’s why I believe there is merit in reading books in their full form. Yes, there are plenty of tools and techniques to help you skim or just have a summary — but is that the best way to learn to compete in a complex world? Far too easy to approach training with a mindset that knows the cost of everything and places the value on almost nothing.
But right now, your competition is training so what do you do?
The reality is, however, you split that phase or wherever you put the emphasis the competition in training and being trained. What is worse, is that our passive participation is actually helping many of the large language models to train without our appreciation of what is going — we’re actively helping the competition get better!
Here’s three things you can think about doing:
1) Reframe training (or learning) as a core aspect of your job and give it the priority it deserves
2) Consider what anticipatory learning for an uncertain future means for you. Don’t just learn to solve a problem but be curious and explore the future opportunity.
3) Understand where training is able to provide a solution — that might be better use of your apprenticeship levy, it may be to increase the diversity of your workforce or to reduce the time to hire and retain the workforce you’ve already invested in.
But whatever you do, and however #LAWW has shaped you, then don’t let it be a zero-sum approach to the future. You’re in an infinite game and able to play an active part!
Looking forward to continuing the discussions…
