The older I get, the more I seem to be benefit from learning from experience - probably no great surprises there. That learning seems to come from my own perspectives, people I talk to, my coaching and mentoring clients or organisations I work with as a consultant.
There are so many different approaches that can help us learn from experience – including the mistakes we make – to help shape different ways of thinking and doing things. In our time-poor society, learning from experience is often promoted as a time-saving activity. But, in my view it’s as much about getting more positive energy from what we learn as it is from considering what could go wrong. It helps us get into a different mindset.
Here are five ways I’ve learned to improve my approach to learning from experience, both personally and from working with organisations, that you might find useful too.
Image: Tim Mossholder, unsplash
Looking at mistakes as learning opportunities – the secret is in the word - ‘mis-takes’. It’s a chance to learn what didn’t work so well and have another go in a different way. Years ago, I worked for a CEO in a very successful tech business who said that making mistakes were absolutely OK as long as they were used as a way to learn. The challenge comes when we don’t learn from them – so for him, it wasn’t OK to make the same mistake twice. That’s stuck with me ever since.
Think about premortems as well as post-mortems – I’ve led and been involved in many, many lessons learned sessions in organisations, where we carry out a post-mortem on a project with the aim of learning from what’s happened. It’s rare in all that time that I’ve heard of a lessons learned analysis being taken forward to the next big project. So, the idea of a premortem, using our imaginations to consider that the project has failed before it’s begun and understanding where things could go awry, is a great idea. But don’t take my word for it - this Harvard Business Review article references a study showing the benefits of this for organisations. We can use this approach just as well in our personal lives, learning from what we already know and thinking ahead to identify risks ahead of kicking things off. Using our imaginations can be hugely powerful.
Slow down, make time to reflect – without time to reflect, there’s little chance to learn and making enough time for that reflection, from both a personal and professional perspective, is key. But don’t be like teams I’ve worked with in the past who have ‘wedged in’ lessons learnt debriefs long after a project has finished, and the lessons are long-forgotten. What a wasted opportunity. Which leads to…
Using different ways to reflect. I listened to a podcast with the actor Matthew McConaughey recently. Around 26 minutes in, he touches on the point that learning from and looking back at our successes is just as important as learning from our mistakes. So how can we do that? He references keeping a diary, but you can just as well put notes on your phone, get an accountability partner to chat through progress (especially if you work on your own) or simply say stuff out loud. As the podcast hosts often say, “success leaves clues”, so unpick those clues.
Listen to your gut, your intuition – I talk about this often with clients and I’ve blogged about it here too - Those ‘spidey senses’ moments, where we get that weird but strong feeling that’s something not quite right, are drawing on what we’ve learned before so they’re definitely worth taking notice of.
Learning from our experience, using our imaginations, is such a powerful way of helping us design new ways of thinking and doing. It can help us switch into a different mindset of brainstorming and creativity, drawing on what we already know (which is potentially a huge library of experience) to create something new.
So, slow down, check in with yourself and keep reflecting. Let me know how you get on.