Sims Learning Connections

Another rediscovery from my personal library is Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future (original 2004 SoL edition), which I purchased in January 2005, but didn’t have the patience to read until this week.

Other than my newly found time, part of what prompted me to read the book cover-to-cover was Mark Oehlert’s June 13th rant triggered by the personal learning environment conversation earlier this month:

Please stop using the word “learning” like its something that we can package and sell or even give away.

I felt it was time I revisited some of the deeper meanings of “learning.” This desire to go deeper was certainly achieved with reading this book although it opened as many questions for me as it may have answered — itself an example of deeper learning.

In the Introduction the authors make a distinction between “reactive learning” and “deeper levels of learning.” Both forms of learning utilize thinking and doing; however, “in reactive learning, thinking is governed by established mental models and doing is governed by established habits of action” (p.8) — ‘Downloading’ what has previously worked and again applying, as in believed ‘Best Practice’. While “deeper levels of learning create increasing awareness of the larger whole–both as it is and as it is evolving–that leads to actions that increasingly serve the emerging whole” (p.9)

It is hard work to be still, take time to really observe and digest the whole. This reflection time goes against the western culture of always having an immediate answer, a quick win and quarterly financial results. Additionally, “when we’re learning something new, we feel awkward, incompetent, and even foolish. It’s easy to convince ourselves that it’s really not so important after all to incorporate the new–and so we give up. This is our own psychological ‘immune system’ at work.” (p.35) — perpetuating dependency on our existing mental models of how the world works.

The book shares Brian Arthur’s description of:

a second type of learning…where we learn instead from a future that has not yet happened and from continually discovering our part in bringing that future to pass. Learning based on the past suffices when the past is a good guide to the future. But it leaves us blind to profound shifts when whole new forces shaping change arise (p.86)

Continuing, Eleanor Rosch is quoted for her distinction between analytic knowing where “the world consists of separate objects and state of affairs…[and] the human mind…isolates and identifies these objects and events” and primary knowing from “interconnected wholes, rather than isolated contingent parts…” (p.98-99)

Without rehashing the “U Theory” process model, which is well covered in co-author Otto Scharmer’s site, some take-aways, or at least good reminders, for me were:

• Gaining clarity on intent (e.g. p.138) and the resulting “surrendering to commitment” (p. 102) where it is almost impossible to not follow your calling. This and other portions of the book remind me of yet other unread books on my shelves to get to: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work regarding “flow.”
• The consequences of ‘fragmentation, building from concepts similar to Rosch above:’ “the further one advances in any scientific discipline, the more narrow it tends to become. This carries over into all fields in modern society, to the extent that what it means to be ‘an expert’ today is knowing a lot about a little” (p.196) At times I’ve personally felt up against this as I try to maintain expertise across disciplines such as ‘learning’, ‘knowledge management’, ‘software development’, and ‘management and leadership’.
• Further validation and pointers to additional resources relative to the importance of “inner work” to complement externally-oriented professional work (e.g. p.38-39)
• Balancing theory with practice (p. 232)

Next on my ‘purchased but never fully read’, Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind…