9Qs Resources for Q3

9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work Resources for Question 3: Learning Journeys

9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work Resources for Question 3: Learning Journeys by Scott Downs and Gerald Doyle Copyright © 2021 Scott Downs and Gerald Doyle. All rights reserved. Tri Cosain books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales pro- motional use. Online editions are available. For moreinformation, contact: Scott: [email protected] Gerald: [email protected] Designer: Hammad Khalid, www.HMDpublishing.com www.tricosain.com



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Contents Introduction 3 Quotations 7 Exercises for exploring Question 3 13 The Creative Rollercoaster 15 Learners, not Knowers 17 Agile planning as a learning journey 21 The Hero’s Journey 23 Learning with and from our heroes 25 Sources and references 26 Sketches, observations and notes 27

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Introduction This volume provides additional resources to inquire into the third of nine questions we pose in our curatorial book, 9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work. With this question, we look into the patterns we find in our journeys of inquiry. How do we learn, discover new truths, go deeper into familiar ones, and get better at doing the things we care about most, including acts of creativity and service, creating value, personal develop- ment, and service to others, individually and in commu- nity? 3

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3 How might we become more skillful learners, courageously venturing into the unknown? Individuals and teams need to learn and grow: journeys of inquiry are the means by which deep learning takes place. How might we understand the dynamics of these jour- neys, and help our colleagues, teams and organizations travel them, to emerge with breakthrough insights that lead to important changes? 5

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Quotations Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. - Rainer Maria Rilke Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem. - Jiddu Krishnamurti 7

That’s the basic motif of the universal hero’s journey - leaving one’s condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition. The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there’s something lacking in the normal experiences available or permitted to the members of his society. This person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordi- nary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It’s usually a cycle, a going and a returning. But the structure and something of the spiritual sense of this adventure can be seen already anticipated in the puberty or initiation rituals of early tribal societies, through which a child is compelled to give up its child- hood and become an adult -- to die, you might say, to its infantile personality and psyche and come back as a responsible adult. This is a fundamental psychological transformation that everyone has to undergo. We are in childhood in a condition of dependency.... To evolve out of this position of psychological immaturity to the cour- age of self-responsibility and assurance requires a death and a resurrection. That’s the basic motif of the universal hero’s journey - leaving one’s condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition. -Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers, in The Power of Myth 8

I can suggest one little change right away: Stop generat- ing action plans and start doing experiments. - Hiroshi Hiromoto Nako The root word of education -- educare -- means to lead forth a hidden wholeness in another person. A genuine education fosters self-knowledge, self-trust, creativity and the full expression of one’s unique identity. It gives people the courage to be more. - Rachel Naomi Remen I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Be- cause if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more impor- tantly, you’re doing something. - Neil Gaiman Learning is not compulsory ... neither is survival. -W. Edwards Deming 9

Most situations and decisions in organizations are com- plex because some major change—a bad quarter, a shift in management, a merger or acquisition—introduces unpredictability and flux. In this domain, we can under- stand why things happen only in retrospect. Instructive patterns, however, can emerge if the leader conducts experiments that are safe to fail. That is why, instead of attempting to impose a course of action, leaders must pa- tiently allow the path forward to reveal itself. They need to probe first, then sense, and then respond. - Dave Snowden and Mary Boone In times of change, the learners will inherit the Earth while those attached to their old certainties will find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. - Eric Hoffer, quoted by Fred Kofman To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous. - Chinese proverb , quoted by Mike Cohn 10

I facilitated a session called “What is Education?” Instead of telling the campers what education is, I asked them to reflect on their favorite learning moments from the camp, and together, we drew out lessons on what edu- cation meant to each one of them. Each item on the list, connected to a specific activity, day, or moment through- out the camp, was truly remarkable: education is fun, col- laborative, personally transformative, equitable, aligning with personal passions, making us better people and friends, multiple ways of being smart, directly connected to our lives, looking inside and reflecting, connected to the community and environment, learning to be happy, and learning to love. - Tim Huang There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning. -Jiddu Krishnamurti The whole concept of managing complexity is not plan and meet the plan, it’s probe, observe and adjust. - Mary Poppendieck 11

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Exercises for exploring Question 3 13

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The Creative Rollercoaster Please consider using the Creative Rollercoaster, as ar- ticulated by Nick Udall, as a personal mental model for a learning journey. To do this, form a “breakthrough question” - one that is profoundly important, one that you do not know the answer to, and one where, if the answer were known, a breakthrough in understanding or performance might take place. Create a container for yourself, which might include just you or others, but creates a conscious space for pursu- ing the inquiry. Increase your sense of self-awareness and systemic awareness. Then plunge into the unknown, holding the question. During the period of inquiry, launch experiments, study data, hold dialogic conversations. Hold the tension of the question. Be patient in expecta- tion of breakthrough. Record your learnings - and especially any break- throughs, as appropriate, in your journal, and/or in your “vision boxes.” 15

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Learners, not Knowers Fred Kofman, in his book, Conscious Business, invites leaders to be “Learners,” not “Knowers”. He writes… Knowers, also known as “Know-it-alls” claim to al- ways know how things are, how they ought to be, and what needs to be done. They give a lot of orders and ask very few questions. Knowers are not those who know many things be- cause they’ve studied and practiced, becoming ex- perts in a certain field. Knowers are those who, re- gardless of their real knowledge, want to impose their views on everybody else. Learners are curious and humble, less certain about how to interpret what is going on and what to do about it. They are more inquisitive than directive. They tend to consider others’ perspectives instead of imposing their own. Learners are not those who lack knowledge or ex- pertise in a certain field. Learners are those who, re- gardless of their real knowledge (which can be mas- sive), keep an open, curious mind, and don’t want to shut down alternative points of view without re- spectful consideration. 17

Knowers stake their self-esteem on being right—or at least convincing everybody that they are. They im- pose their opinions on others and claim that these opinions are “the truth.” They try to eliminate all opposing views until everybody agrees with them. They believe that they see things as they are, and that whoever does not see things in the same way is wrong. Learners stake their self-esteem on staying open— and inviting everybody to share their views. They seek to understand and be understood. They feel at ease presenting their opinions to others as rea- sonable assessments and inviting others to present their different opinions in a spirit of mutual learn- ing. They believe that they see things as they appear to them, and that their view is only part of a larger picture.” How do you measure your self-esteem? Is it more about what you know, or about how skilled you are at learning? Have you experienced others, perhaps leaders, who clearly saw themselves as “Knowers”? Alternatively, have you experienced people who clearly saw themselves as “Learners”? What differ- ences do you perceive in these people’s effective- ness? 18

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Agile planning as a learning journey Consider setting some learning objectives for yourself as part of an Agile plan. Set forward your main, long-term goals in simple language that anyone can understand. Then set yourself a short cycle, perhaps one or two weeks, to accomplish small parts of the larger goal. Make sure the smaller chunks each contribute value to the whole project and have clear deliverables (read a book, write a summary, interview someone, learn something specific as a result of an activity, etc. ) At the end of each short cycle, review your progress. Ret- rospect about what you have learned and how you might want to adjust your practices over the rest of the plan- ning period. Then plan the next short cycle, with an eye on the larger goal, and learning from all previous cycles. Iterate and seek to deliver your larger goal as a collec- tion of small chunks of value, learning and adapting all the way. You can add future learning objectives to a back- log, which you can keep ordered in the way that adds the most value to you. Observe your results and record insights, experience, and learnings in your journal. Learn more about Agile Planning in Resources for Ques- tion 1: Inspiration in our 9 Questions series. 21

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The Hero’s Journey Please read the quotation from Joseph Campbell on page 8. What meaning do you make of Joseph Campbell’s description of the Hero’s Journey? Do you see this as a model for a learning journey? Do you have the experience of a journey like this yourself, in a small or large way? Would you like to have one? Please be invited to record your observations in your journal and add any actions this reflection inspires to your personal action plan. 23

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Learning with and from our heroes If you are keeping a list of heroes, formally or informally, which of them are Learners? Did they go through a pro- cess of learning and development in the course of their lives? If yes, what was that like for them, as you under- stand it? What kind of a change did they undergo? What would you like to learn from them? What learning objectives might you set yourself based on your “heroes” experiences? Please be invited to record any insights and observations in your journal, and add any actions you wish to your personal action plan. 25

Sources and references • Brown, Change by Design • Burnett and Evans, Designing Your Life • Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces • Deming, Out of the Crisis • Downs and Doyle, Conversations of Inquiry • Kofman, Conscious Business • Martin, Design of Business • Mayer, The People’s Scrum • Scharmer, Theory U • Snowden and Boone, A Leader’s Framework for Deci- sion-Making (HBR) • Udall, Riding the Creative Roller Coaster • Vision quests, e.g. http://sacredpassage.com/ 26

Sketches, observations and notes 27