Fostering a Learning Culture
“Web 3 is an Internet owned by users and builders orchestrated with tokens” — Chris Dixon
“What? I just learned Web 2.0. :-)” — Me
You can probably replace Web 3 with anything in your field of work and still make the above quote ring true. As the rate of knowledge creation increases, staying up-to-date with the ever evolving technology landscape becomes increasingly challenging.
So how do we stay up-to-date when the rate of innovation shows no sign of slowing down?
In this article I will discuss some of the approaches I take to stay current and how a company can have a direct impact on creating a learning culture.
Knowledge Curve Acceleration
Anyone in the tech industry is familiar with what is known as Moore’s Law. It has been true since 1975 and it is just a given at this point. While the advances spurred by Moore’s law are so firmly entrenched that companies plan their research around them, what is less emphasized, but arguably more prescient, is that we see an even more accelerated trend with human knowledge, or at least the information that gets generated.
Where Moore’s Law captures the runaway advances rooted in microchip improvements, Buckminster Fuller presents his complementary argument for the growth of knowledge. His findings reveal that knowledge doubled every 100 years in the 1900s and accelerated to every 13 months by the time he published his landmark 1982 work Critical Path. If that’s not enough to spark your attention, let’s look at a more updated version of his discoveries below.
IBM recently conducted a study to reassess this growth in the modern landscape. Their conclusion presents the shocking revelation that a mere twelve hours is what it takes to double the knowledge. If you were not astonished before, I bet you are now!
This dizzying increase in knowledge can be overwhelming but let’s see how we can approach it at both a personal and company level.
It all Starts With you
I believe learning is something you should do every day, or at least as frequently as possible. In my case, I identified the time of day when I feel most comfortable absorbing new content and follow that rhythm as closely as I can.
Any new knowledge, be it a tool or technology/pattern, comes with a learning curve, but I have found that the more you know the easier it becomes to draw parallels with previous iterations and spot the overarching principles behind new ideas.
Read, Read Again, and Then Read Some More
In a world with so many different ways to present content, from YouTube videos, to podcasts, to blogs, reading books seems to have become an unpopular choice. I myself prefer to balance quick drops from videos and blog posts — like this one — with a more long-term commitment that I only find in good books. Blogs or videos are also good sources of inspiration for subjects that I want to know more about. Taking note of the authors and following what they release is another way to expand your source of references.
Practice Leads to Perfection More Questions
Whatever the medium you choose, consuming it is a unidirectional effort. The next step is putting your new knowledge into practice, and for me this is when things truly become interesting.
This hands-on tinkering can begin in a number of ways, drawing inspiration from something you saw at work or a personal project. Trying to actually produce something using what you learned is key to solidifying what you (think) you have learned. If you are like me, it will actually raise more questions that have not been answered in the source material. Use those questions to instigate you to dig deeper into the matter.
All of the above showcases what you can do as an individual. But it does not tell the whole story and here is where the company you work at can play an active role.
You are not Alone
A workplace that welcomes purposeful exploration is key to making sure your progress is not something that feels like a solitary journey to be taken after hours. Let’s not confuse this with curriculum driven development (CDD), I’m talking about having the opportunity to propose and try a certain tool or technology, as long as it is aligned with company objectives.
If the company has a clear roadmap, having a technology radar, akin to the one produced by ThoughtWorks, will make it easier to identify areas where your new learnings could be of value. If not, you can look at future projects and suggest something that is aligned with the non-functional requirements during the architecture design.
Sharing is Caring
To make things more concrete, I will highlight some of the practices found at SSENSE.
So far I have covered actions that either represents individual effort or a top-down approach in the form of guidelines found on the tech radar. At scale, other practices that are extremely powerful are bottom-up initiatives such as book clubs, developer-driven knowledge-sharing sessions, and tech blogs.
Although encouraged by SSENSE, all of these initiatives are driven by the desire of the internal tech community to have a shared medium to discuss and disseminate learnings. Colloquially, we call this our culture of knowledge sharing.
We have a book club that anyone can join, where we suggest books and hold weekly gatherings to discuss our learnings. We discuss what we liked or didn’t like about the content and even how this may or may not be related to the challenges we face. I find this awesome because it is yet another source of inspiration. For example, we recently read Strategic Monoliths and Microservices which led to some members refining the way they approach modeling the boundaries for services we develop.
We also have an internal platform, which we refer to as SSENSE University, where we help each other develop through knowledge sharing and continuous learning. Anyone can propose a theme and present it to their peers either in-person or over video-conference. The sessions are recorded so that colleagues can refer back to them or watch them at a later time if they weren’t able to join the live session. It is a useful way to provide targeted presentations and is typically the result of having tried a specific tool, service, or technique.
Finally, we have the SSENSE Tech blog like this article you are reading — yet another channel to share our ideas and findings to an external audience. It can not only help others going through the same journey (be it implementing a certain technology, or embarking on a new career path), but can also spur collaborations with external parties.
Conclusion
In my opinion, the best things happen when you find a synergic relationship, where something I learned at work sparks my curiosity to learn further, or a blog post or book gives me an idea to try at work.
As tech leaders and enthusiasts, I believe we play a pivotal role in fostering a learning culture. From looking for a place to work that already fosters these practices, to contributing and helping advance these practices, and taking the time after hours to further our learning journey.
So don’t wait! Reach out to some of your colleagues and start a book club or present what you’ve learned while working on certain projects to share the knowledge across your department.
And most importantly, remember to have fun!
Editorial reviews by Catherine Heim & Nicole Tempas.
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