January 15, 2021

Disruptive Learning: Designing Smart Mistakes for Success

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The more I think about professional development and learning, the more I think it ought to be referred to as disruptive or radical learning.

Let us take a step back to Strathmore University to illustrate what I mean. About six years ago, around 2014, we were entertaining the idea of blended learning which entails combining online and face-to-face learning in our programs. In such a setting, face-to-face learning would take up about 70 percent of each program offering and 30 percent would be offered virtually. We had numerous discussions, thought about relevant policies, strategies, and the infrastructure needed to make this a reality.

However, not all stakeholders were necessarily convinced that this was a good idea. Although on the face of it, it seemed like a viable proposal, there were many questions regarding our value proposition in the online offering, quality of delivery, buy-in, and the ultimate question – if it isn’t broken, why fix it? Questions, uncertainty, and doubt seemed to engulf us. Additionally, we have always prided ourselves in face-to-face engagement in all our programs. Although there were attempts to offer blended learning these remained fragmented. Month after month, year after year, we suspended the plan to fully implement a blended learning strategy.

With the onset of COVID-19 in Kenya came the Presidential directive to close all learning institutions until further notice. With that one directive, our mental models were thrown into disarray, what we have successfully practiced for decades was no longer an option. We now had to move to online learning and unlike the blended learning model now we needed to go 100 percent online.

All the questions, doubts, fears, and uncertainty we had previously discussed multiplied many times over, and now coupled with the stress and anxiety of having to do this immediately. The ‘If’ and ‘When’ questions disappeared, and the only question was ‘How’.

Lecturers had to learn fast, students had to adapt fast, we had to ensure everyone had access to the required technology, and that resources were available. In record time, six days to be exact, we had successfully moved all our Programmes online.

It’s been eight months since the University was closed for face-to-face learning. What a journey it has been! It has been a learning experience and a complete shift in mindset. As the government discusses phased re-opening of our learning institutions across the country, some of our students are petitioning that we continue with online learning. They have learned and loved it!

Disruptive Learning

Often, the term ‘professional development’ is associated with incremental learning. We want to learn to be better leaders, more effective managers, more productive board members, and so on. But I am inviting us to consider ‘disruptive’ rather than ‘incremental’ learning. That we would be willing to question our mental models, turn them on their heads, and shift our mindsets. Disruptive learning pushes us out of our comfort zones and forces us to learn to do new things differently, as opposed to simply building on the great positions we’re already in. The experience we have had at Strathmore University demonstrates this.

Allow me to use another example to illustrate what I mean.

I suspect that many of you reading this article are hyper-achievers. Constant outstanding performance and achievement drive you and give you a sense of self-respect and validation. You focus mainly on external success, and this gives you happiness. This leads to workaholic tendencies, being competitive, image- and status-conscious, good at showing a positive image, goal-oriented, and a perfectionist. You say to yourself; “I must be best at what I do.” Self-acceptance is continuously dependent on the next success, and you beat yourself up when you don’t achieve that success.

But did you know that being a hyper-achiever can act as a saboteur that prevents professional development and learning?

Maybe rather than trying to be the best, consider being okay with being good, rather than aiming for 100 percent, consider being comfortable with 80 percent. Allow that gap of 20 percent for experimentation, doubt, and even failure. It is in that 20 percent that new learnings happen. It’s no wonder Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said, ‘Done is better than perfect.’ Some of you may also have heard of the “cult of the imperfect”, which states: “Give them the third best to go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never comes.” This was in relation to war, but the saying is still apt today.

So, how do we focus on disruptive learning?

Self-reflection: Question what drives you. Question your assumptions. Ask “what if” questions. “What if I allow a team member I consider ‘ordinary’ to take a lead on this project, knowing he might fail?” But then again, he might succeed and even surprise us. As it turns out, failure often proves less fatal than imagined.

Fail better: design smart mistakes to succeed sooner. Avoid big failures, or you are dead. Embrace small failures, or you are dead. Seek ways to harness failure. Consider this: What if every project enabled you, your team and your organization to learn and at the same time accomplish the work at hand? If you could embed systems thinking, skill-building, and experimentation into the projects you are expected to deliver, your professional development will connect to your actual work instead of being seen as something separate. Aligning the work that needs to be done with the development of capabilities offers an antidote to the pervasive problem that learning, improvement, and development detract from the ‘real’ work. The right kind of failure instructs, refines, and improves ideas, work products, skills, capacities, and teamwork. You can generate small smart mistakes that enable your team to meet its work requirements (a first-order, performance goals) while building capacity, habits, and insights (a second-order, deeper change) through a simple 3-step process:

(i) launching your project with the right logic, team, and resources

(ii) building and refining your deliverables through testing and iteration

(iii) embedding what you have learned to improve your practice, the habits of your team, and the capabilities of your organization (Sastry & Penn 2014).

Be at peace with the uncomfortable – allow yourself to experience the uncomfortable. Build a relationship with it. Proactively put yourself into diverse, novel, adverse circumstances. Manage the self in the face of fear and uncertainty, so that you can see a better picture across time and space, make wise choices, and take appropriate action. Don’t make comfort a goal in your life. Make learning and growth your goal. If you focus too much on comfort, you may fail to build the muscle of adaptation, and then you will become the failure that you so much dread.

In conclusion, allow yourself to see:

  • Deeper inside yourself, reflect, question, and adjust accordingly.
  • Farther across time and space for trends, key lessons.
  • Outward to bigger systems, outside your field of expertise, your practice.
  • Diverse perspectives by looking through multiple lenses

Because it is in these spaces that learning and development happens.

Article By: Prof. Ruth Kiraka, Strategy & Entrepreneurship, Strathmore University Business School

Would you like to share an article? Write to us at sbscommunication@strathmore.edu

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