Why you should learn: how we will create the new story that will carry us safely into the next century
In my recent letter I wrote: Now is the time to learn because we are making miracles happen. Air pollution is plummeting, carbon emissions are dropping, we are providing basic incomes and realising who creates the real value in our economy.
Take note of what is possible and remember how we made it happen. Ideologies will break and dichotomies crumble; but real learning happens inside each one of us. If the lessons of this time don’t change us individually, we won’t learn them collectively.
If we understand the centrality of learning, the path to the future we want will be shorter.
Miracles are not as impossible as we think. Many have occurred in the last months and they have become possible because our collective mindset, what we believe about the world, has shifted; we have learnt a new story and so what was previously unthinkable has come to pass. We now know that government can do much more than we have been told; that organisations — even huge ones like the UK’s NHS — can change in a matter of weeks and that people are willing to show solidarity for the most vulnerable in society.
To fashion a new story for a better world, we need to learn from what is happening. This applies not just to the pandemic but also, as we are all being reminded, to the interconnected issues of inequality, racism and climate change. In the struggle against racism, writing a new story is most clearly at the forefront of the debate: the re-evaluation of history, the removal of statues and programmes from streaming services are all part of learning a better story.
In our economy the narrative of our story is deeply intertwined with our understanding of evolution. Since Darwin we believe that competition makes progress happen, driven by random variation, merciless selection and genetic heredity — epitomised by the phrase: survival of the fittest[1].
In fact, evolutionary biologists know this is only half the story: Rather than simply being a result of “selfish” genes, evolution is also driven by the ability to make sense of, and react to, information and retain and pass on learning — what biologists refer to as self-organisation; importantly, learning is passed on not only through our genes to our descendants but also through social interactions with our group.
Another common misconception[2] is that genes can, of their own accord, learn and produce life. A more realistic understanding is that genes are like software, which is of no use, unless you have the hardware that can read, translate and bring it to life. In the same way, genes need a cell to be brought to life. This interweaving of physical and intangible occurs in lots of places: At the human level, you can’t separate mind from body; in organisations, culture is can’t be extricated from systems and processes; and in economies and societies, our collective story shapes and is shaped by our social and physical technology and circumstances.
This is also why, at On Purpose, our learning programmes involve both inner and outer work; developing who you are — what you stand for, what you believe — as well as what you do — how you behave and what you achieve.
Despite all of this, we still fetishise competition as the driver of all progress. Even in schools, exams pitch students against each other, organisations benchmark departments and colleagues against each other (and often reward them accordingly) and boards speak in the language of war — strategy, competitive advantage and “winning”.
This story of unthinking competition is closely tied to the narrative of growth, because whoever grows, “wins”. If, however, we use a different filter for success and look at longevity, for example, then learning moves quickly back into focus. Long-lived companies, for example, organise to learn, which involves, for example, tolerating diverse ideas, valuing people and loosening control (themes I have touched on in the previous blogs in this series and are surprisingly pertinent to the conversation about racism).
Whilst some long-surviving companies may have organised to learn, our collective rate of learning is dangerously slow. We have known about the dangers of climate change, for example, since at least 1971 but we are still dithering about taking significant action. A big part of the problem is that our current economic paradigm is constantly positioned as the definitive, and only scientifically credible approach. The irony being, of course, that its understanding of the science of evolution is dangerously flawed. This has a doubly negative effect: not only is learning itself undervalued (compared to “winning” for example), but the ability to evolve the paradigm itself — to learn a new story — is suppressed. Our economy runs on the latest supercomputer, but it hasn’t been allowed a software update in decades!
This inflexibility to learn at a more fundamental level, is dangerous as huge pressures build such as climate change, inequality and, most currently, racism to name but a few.
It’s time for an upgrade of the economic values embedded in our bug-ridden software. A genetic revamp. This requires serious inner work, which, as we know from experience at On Purpose, is challenging; but it is also the only way to real progress.
During their programme, we have long taken On Purpose Associates to Embercombe where I have often heard its founder, Mac Macartney, tell a story about the native Americans he trained with: For a leader to earn the trust of their tribe, they must develop their inner as well as their outer path. A leader who only develops the outer path, however well they might acquit themselves, is viewed with suspicion. If we only address how our economy behaves, it will continue to hemorrhage trust. To heal our economy, we have to commit collectively to the inner work of updating our values. This is hard work, but without it we won’t learn to weave the new story that can carry us safely into the next century.
This is the last of four follow up blogs to my letter: A Moment of Purpose. The first three were:
- Why you should care: Hard-nosed business teaches us that we can insulate ourselves from others. Hard-nosed science disagrees and
- Why you should face up to reality: the insight buried in disparate management practices
- Why you should hope: The future we want grows from a collective act of imagination
Thank you for reading! We invite you to join our conversation on LinkedIn.
I’d like to thank Sally Goerner from whose writings I have drawn a lot of inspiration that has flowed into these blogs.
[1] A phrase actually coined by Herbert Spencer who (mis-)applied Darwin’s ideas to the development of societies as well as species
[2] See, for example, the plot of Jurassic Park, which rests on the scientific impossibility of creating a dinosaur with nothing more than dinosaur DNA.
