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Today’s educational system seems to be a learning pipeline that ends once you have a piece of paper in your hand and a silly hat. Even as it may cater to the masses, individuals are not alike and there are some fundamental differences in how people learn. For instance, how do entrepreneurs learn and how much do most of them actually benefit from memorizing trivial facts on the school bench?
Where does learning begin for an entrepreneur? I would argue that it begins post the silly hat, in real life when faced with real challenges and opportunities. Entrepreneurs tend to see a puzzle and learn to play that puzzle, in some cases even solve the puzzle. This information or knowledge is tacit afterward, you just know. However, even as the real learning may only start when faced with the appropriate (and often fascinating) challenges, entrepreneurs also need to know a little about everything. Unless you are planning to fix that same puzzle over and over, throughout your whole life – then again, how many entrepreneurs would do that?
Do you remember primary school? When you were taught to memorize states, presidents, historical dates and so on? I sure do. The educational pipeline can span for two decades of an individuals life, a quarter of a long lifetime. Are we making the most of those two decades? In today’s world, where one could argue that printed books often contain outdated information and a whole lot of what we “learn” in school is really only repetition – where is the value of this pipeline for an entrepreneur and furthermore, could there be more value?
In our Podcast a while back with Bjoern Lasse Herrmann, from Supercool School, we talked about learning and how different people learn in different ways. Some entrepreneurs are drop-outs, not because of lacking potential, but lacking the right tools to develop that potential and channel that talent. Shouldn’t our systems cater for those individuals as well? Also, which do you think is worse, dropping out because of ‘not belonging’ and benefiting from the system or being resilient and “surviving” in the system, yet not really getting any value from it?
What we also talked about in the Supercool School approach, was the changing archetypes in teachers and students – both tended to be participating at the self-chosen level and by choice. I would argue that this will have a tremendous impact on learning, from both angles. Imagine listening to someone you wanted to listen to, talk about something you wished to learn – does that sound like your experience from your education? Some of the times maybe, but all of the time?
To be frank, this is quite a selfish post, having sat in the educational pipeline for that two decades, and only in the last years finding subjects I am passionate about. For me, it seems that a lot of that time spent on school benches constituted missed opportunities and untapped talent in many cases.
As an entrepreneur, I’ve chosen to learn in and from the real world – most entrepreneurs do. A big part of that real world constitutes people and often other entrepreneurs. To link this post back to the recent topic of Ecosystems, I believe that the community ecosystem can also foster learning, via new perspectives, initiatives and working together with like-minded people. Learning is crucial, how else will you know you’re making progress?
Learning should always be a top priority, which it also is, in our community. Engaging with people requires so much more that simple wit, and that I believe, is one of the biggest teaching points in our educational system, even today. In global operations and in a global community, you can interact with people whose whole lives are very unlike your own, people who do not share your thoughts, practices and possible perceptions of the world. Talk about a learning opportunity! Not simply about other people and how to interact with them, but a vast learning opportunity to find out about yourself as a person, how you tick and how you make others tick.
In a changing world, we need to be humble enough to accept the gaps in our understanding and courageous enough, to embrace our passion for learning. Growing as an entrepreneur, and as a human being, builds on the premise of constant learning.
