Change is the Child of Learning

When we were in class Tuesday night and Dr. Carter asked us to find a statement in the Preface that we really liked I had quite a few, but this quote from chapter one struck a chord with me…..”Learning is the process that underlies and gives birth to change.  Change is the child of learning.”  WOW!  I read this and just sat and thought about it for a good five minutes.  At first read this is just a statement about learning but upon further inspection I started applying it to my own experiences.  One good example of this comes to mind at VCU Health System.  The hospital has started a “Safety First, Everyday” initiative and all employees of the health system have to go to a 4 hour class that teaches different techniques to everyone like STAR (Stop Think Act Review).  The classes also teach communication techniques, having a questioning attitude and accountability.  They are really great classes.  But that’s all they are is classes and if that is all the health system is doing to reinforce this idea then I don’t think the ideas would go farther than the classroom but there is more to the initiative than the classes.  For example they started a safety star program to highlight individuals who went above and beyond the norm for safety.  There are a lot of outside the classroom programs the hospital is doing to help the organization learn and those things are quite visible.  I think it is invaluable for my learning process that I work for a company where I can apply what I have learned but also can see examples of what I am learning.

Something else I wanted to talk about from the reading was from chapter 1 where Dixon talks about how management has changed since the Knowledge Age began.  I agree with her ideas that the roles of employees and managers have changed.  But what really struck me about this section was her statement that “Learning creates equals, not subordinates, and thus work is increasingly conceived as a team effort.”  I agree that learning is a team effort but I think a lot of the tension that surrounds organizations today stems from the learning creates equals assumptions.  On the surface I agree with this notion, but think about it.  If I work for “Bob”  and Bob and I work as a team and learn and change the organization as a team and sometimes I even feel like I bring more to the table than Bob then why does Bob make twice what I make.  I know there are varying situations and problems with this very basic example but I think it illustrates my point which it that in today’s organization where employees are required to not just follow a set of steps for 8 hours and go home, but are to problem solve and trouble shoot and analyze why is there still such a hierarchy in many organizations?   I think this is cause for organizational tensions and I can definitely see examples of it in my own organization.  We as blood bankers are required to make tough and quick decisions sometimes and then the very next day are made to feel as though we are just employees and are incapable of making those types of decisions.  I have specific examples, but won’t get into here.

One last thing I wanted to reflect on come from class and the mind map discussion.  The statement, all of our experiences, from birth influence our individual mind map.  I loved thinking about that in class and wanted to share my thoughts here.  My daughter is 15 months old now and she is walking and running and all that, but the most amazing thing she is now doing is trying to communicate verbally.  I can see her trying to figure things out and essentially build her mind map.  It is amazing.  I know all of you parents out there are probably like “yeah yeah just wait til she won’t stop talking” but for me this is so cool.  The example I was thinking about in class was one of Jolee’s new words which is hot.  She used to want whatever I was drinking and I would give her some of my water but if I was drinking a cup of coffee in the morning I would tell her “no no it’s hot” and I would put her hand gently on the outside of the cup and show her what hot was.  Well it took her a few days but she now knows what hot is and now everything is hot.  She sees me blowing on the bits of food before I put them on her tray and dinner time and she picks them up and says “hot?”  I put her in the car and if it hot in the car she says “hot?”   And I hear her trying to use it more and more and discover how to use it.  The best was when I was folding clothes from the dryer the other  day and I had just stopped it.  She came around the corner and put her hands in the dryer to help me pull the clothes out and said stopped, looked at me and said “HOT!”  Way to build that mind map baby!

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