Unlearning - the only way to learn

Russell Ackoff, long term scourge of established corporate thinking, maveric teacher and highly influential management guru, maintained that everything taught at business school is irrelevant. He was still banging this drum up to his death, aged 90, in October 2009.

In this inspiring interview for Peter Day's World of Business programme on BBC Radio 4, Ackoff asserts that nearly everything we need to learn in business, we learn on the job. This is not the case for Medical School graduates who, as he points out, leave college work-ready, having already had some on the job training.

It does explain though, why business school graduates take years to reach positions of responsibility, rather than going in at the top.

The lesson here is simple. If what we need to know in order run things we learn by doing, then what we need now is to learn new skills relevant for our times. The work we do here at Hoop brings us into close contact with many for whom learning the skills required in the digital era is painful and unfamiliar.

But to be useful in business in a networked, collaborative world, people already in work, particularly those in management, must un-learn most of what they picked up since starting out, and develop new skills, new tools and new ways of collaborating.

The old saying tells us old dogs find it hard to learn new tricks. But learn them they must. Otherwise, they will have no legitimacy in positions of leadership.

The tools are certainly available, so too is the evidence that these new tools actually work. In most cases, the thing holding back progress is fear and self preservation. Neither of which can exist if any new learning is to take place.

So we try to help people unlearn in a safe and constructive way and pick up new skills free from fear. It's only by doing this that they ensure their own relevance and value in the future.

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