To scale your business effectively, it’s crucial for you and your team to engage in continuous learning. The knowledge and skills that have brought you to your current level of success may not suffice to achieve growth by two, three, or tenfold. It’s essential to acquire the necessary competencies before you reach the desired scale.
This process involves stepping out of your comfort zone, as the growth of the company may otherwise surpass the capabilities of you and your team.
To ensure your team’s competencies evolve with your business, you have two options: enhance their knowledge and skills or hire individuals with the experience of scaling businesses. Both strategies require embracing discomfort.
For those opting to develop their team’s abilities, a foundational understanding of how learning works can significantly enhance the effectiveness of this endeavor.
Lindsey Richland, an expert in learning sciences, emphasizes that effective learning involves seeking out causes, drawing parallels, and distinguishing differences, rather than relying on rote memorization. Traditional education methods—such as passive listening in a classroom, and repetitive reading, highlighting, or underlining—do not align with the brain’s learning processes. For knowledge to be retained and useful, the learning process must be engaging and meaningful.
The brain prioritizes information it perceives as important, integrating new knowledge by connecting it to existing information, akin to how Google’s algorithms prioritize search results or how scientists assess the relevance of research. This connection-rich approach ensures that learning is deeply embedded and readily accessible for future application.
According to Ulrich Boser’s book, Learn Better, here are the key steps to increase the chances of retention and recall.
1. Finding Meaning – It’s crucial to find personal significance in the material you are studying. This personal connection can make learning more engaging and effective. What is significant to you willbe different for someone else, helping each person connect what they are learning to what it means to them is crucial. Making sure you do this up front will significantly shrink the learning time and accelerate mastery.
2. Setting Specific Goals – For mastering a skill, it’s important to set small, targeted goals. This approach helps in focusing on specific aspects of the skill and in tracking progress. Please note that spacing out and constantly reflecting on learning (see below for more) will increase the changes of retention and recall.
3. Feedback – Feedback plays a critical role in learning. It helps in understanding what areas need improvement and in adjusting methods accordingly. Please note that the content and timing of feedback are key. If you give feedback too quickly or overwhelm the student with lots of diverse feedback you can slow learning. Asking and helping the student to find the errors on thier own first will build confidence as well as increase learning speed.
4. Immersing in the Field and Visualizing – Deep immersion in a subject area and making learning visually accessible are key. This could involve surrounding oneself with relevant material or using visual aids to better understand and retain information. This process has been proven the grade A way to learn a new language. Forcing and exposing yourself to all aspects of the process works well. Visualizing is important as the brain does not know differentiate well between what you think and what you do. It is taking electrical and chemical signals from the internal and external world to rewire itself. Olympic athletes use this technique to run or swim the perfect race over and over so when the time comes it is automatic.
5. Understanding Relationships and Diverse Approaches – It’s not just about practice, but about understanding the relationships between concepts and trying different approaches to a skill. This deeper understanding can lead to better mastery. we often learn the what but not the why or the how of concepts. We also must integrate disprate concpets together. Once we can do this, we have truly mastered something, Think back to when you first learned to drive a car. You had to learn many concepts such as gas pedal, brake steering wheel, mirrors, how hard to press the gas or brake, when to turn, etc. It was the integration of all these things that allowed you to now drive with relative ease while now doing other things like hold a conversation or listen to the radio with little to no impact of your driving.
6. Reviewing and Reflecting on Knowledge – Regularly reviewing what you’ve learned and reflecting on your knowledge helps in solidifying the learning and avoiding overconfidence. Self-quizzing, reflective writing, sharing with or teaching it to someone else all increase learning speed and mastery
For more in-depth information, I recommend picking up Learn Better. Mr. Boser has taken some pretty complicated concepts and made them accessible.
Learning is critical to growing your team and your company, I strongly encourage you to delve deeper into how deep learning works. Your life and the lives of your team will benefit greatly!