We Learn Iteratively and Emergently

Networks grow by learning to connect with others that open up new possibilities.

How My Learning Happens

I started The Future of Leadership with Ed Brenegar with two purposes. One is to develop a new audience for my leadership content. My second purpose is to create a venue where I could return to material that I had learned over the past fifty years to reacquaint, relearn, and restore my command over the ideas that were instrumental in the creation of my leadership model the Circle of Impact. The past six months rival the three years that I wrote and promoted my book, Circle of Impact: Taking Personal Initiative to Ignite Change in terms of enjoyment and satisfaction.

Thank you for subscribing and reading these essays.

I know they are long and sometimes dense. But if you stick with them, your perception of the world will expand so that you can see what I see.

It is a big, beautiful world out there full of crisis, conflict, and corruption. You can shrink in fear because you do not understand it. Or, you can embrace the opportunity to learn how you can make a difference that matters.

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Here is an insight that might also incentivize your interest in spending more time reading what I am presenting here. I am showing you how I learn. You can add to your knowledge by reading a book. But real learning comes from taking information gathered from whatever source you may find, and figuring out how to apply it in your life and work. Here is what I do.

I watch.

I listen.

I take notes.

I analyze.

I study.

Only then do I begin to articulate my thoughts in writing.

Learning is a process of qualification and application.

A life-long learning process is iterative and emergent.

Real learning is Interative and Emgergent.

Let’s define these terms.

Iterative: Of a procedure that involves repetition of steps (iteration) to achieve the desired outcome.

Emergent: Coming into view, existence, or notice.

We learn by repetition, not only by the act of practicing over and over again but by relearning in new contexts.

This is how iterative learning is emergent.

Real, deep learning emerges.

Iterative, emergent learning is transformational.

This kind of learning transforms not only our perception of ourselves and the world but how we act in that world. From there we learn how to take personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters. When we act on what we learn and it doesn’t languish in our heads, we take on the life of a person of impact.

Let’s apply this perspective to my previous post, The Science of Networks of Relationships.

Resistance to Learning

I am an observant learner. I watch and assess what I see. I identify patterns of behavior that help me understand the driving motivation behind people’s behavior and how those behaviors affect organizations.

One of those patterns was the resistance to learning. There are plenty of people who read voraciously. But they don’t learn from what they read. There are other people who feel that they already know everything that is necessary. They lack curiosity. As a result, they become a less attractive connection for bridging a structural hole. This is particularly true within a network of people who share similar values, knowledge bases, and access to the same information.

One way to identify this pattern of behavior is a person’s or a group’s growing sense of alienation and isolation. In particular, during times of dramatic change, people can feel alienated. Feeling alone and unable to know how to respond, they become even further detached from those who are the closest to them. At this point, the network is beginning to break down. The members may not even be aware that this is happening.

There is a facet of this pattern of behavior that resists new ideas, new relations, new perspectives, and behavioral change. The old normal was comfortable and secure. The new normal is unknown and unsettling. Often I find that the circle of close ties displays a group-level pattern of behavior of isolation from becoming closed to what they may perceive as the outside world.

Several months ago, I saw how this pattern of closeted behavior can impact a community. The councilman from a small town asked for my help in developing an economic development plan. It is a town that has one gas station, one restaurant, some industrial businesses, several empty commercial buildings, and access to a local river. I came over and spent a day interviewing people. I left with the impression that the councilman was the only one concerned about the future of the town. Most everyone else was interested in keeping town spending low, solving the town’s water system failure, and in protecting their personal property from the encroachment of outside business interests.

This community’s resistance to change is a function of the closed nature of their network of relationships. Their strong ties go back several generations. Once the local network becomes closed to new ideas and people from the outside of their circle, social capital ceases to grow.

This is a scenario that I have seen many times. Once it becomes entrenched, it is difficult to alter. As a result, we need to understand what it takes to be open to change.

Openness To Learning, Openness to Change

In my essay, The Science of Networks of Relationships, I described the network concepts of Structural Holes, The Strength of Weak Ties, The Diffusion of Innovations, and Social Capital. Ronald Burt, the creator of the Structural Holes concept and the developer of the network theory of social capital in his essay (with Joseph Jannota and James Mahoney) Personality Correlates of Structural Holes “explores the idea that personality varies systematically with structural holes”.

“The content of the personality items associated with network structure is consistent with the structural hole argument. The argument is that people who broker connections across structural holes can add value through the information and control benefits that reside in the holes. The motivation question asks where people are equally likely to pursue the benefits. Individuals who pursue the benefits of structural holes - entrepreneurs … are more the authors of their own social world. Establishing relations with otherwise disconnected people means negotiating ambiguity and conflicting demands, it means being an outsider. Remove the entrepreneur’s ties to otherwise disconnected groups, and the groups drift apart. At the other end of the structural hole continuum, cliques and hierarchical structures of constrained networks are more stable, more secure, because interdependent ties sustain the network. Remove one person, and the network is still held together by ties between the other people in the network.”

Burt is affirming the different personalities within a network of relationships. He shows that there are those who create a secure network. There are also those he calls entrepreneurial who expand the network by connecting with new networks. It is this second behavior that is the pattern of behavior for openness and learning.

The non-entrepreneurial person needs relationships with entrepreneurial people in order to expand their perception of the world and access information that is relevant to their network.

The entrepreneurial person needs relationships with non-entrepreneurial to learn how to develop close ties that build secure, sustainable networks. The iterative, emergent learning happens in the relationships, in the bridging of the structural holes. As we bridge, we influence and impact one another with what we know and what we don’t know, but need to know.

The town described above has a tight network of ties. The problem is that they really don’t have those who can connect with other networks to bring new vitality to their town. The member of the town council who reached out to me was seeking to learn what it would take for the town to grow economically. For a brief time, social capital was created as we spent a few weeks in discussion and my one day of interviews. In the end, it was clear this network is closed to learning and thereby, closed to any solution to their town’s economic challenges that require changing the status quo.

From my perspective, you don’t have to be an entrepreneur to behave like one. It simply means being open and observant for opportunities to expand your network of relationships. All it requires is a natural curiosity, the willingness to ask questions and answer them, and ultimately, establish a relationship of understanding.

Reaffirming Iterative, Emergent Learning

Real learning is Iterative and Emergent.

We learn by repetition, not only by the act of practicing over and over again but by relearning in new contexts.

Iterative learning takes place in the context of networks of relationships.

We make mistakes. We fall down. We get up. We try again.

Real, deep learning emerges step-by-step, iteratively.

We learn from each other.

We change.

We ask for help. We offer help.

We are transformed, over and over again, day-by-day, week-by-week, year-by-year, all through our lives,

This is how iterative learning emerges in our lives.

Iterative, emergent learning is transformational.

Transformational is a life lived at the edge of fulfillment and growth.

In our networks of relationships, this is how we can learn to change.