Challenge what you know – Learning to unlearn

To most of us, life is all about adventure and thrill - have you ever discovered that what you learnt as a child, does not hold good all through your Life? Our perception changes in life’s timeline since the mental model around us is constantly evolving. And it is constantly evolving due to our new experiences with every passing day. As a result, during our Life’s journey, we question ourselves what we have learnt and even more, we don’t hesitate to challenge ourselves often. Our belief system gives the trigger that existing learning is no longer serving us at the present moment and we decide to relearn a new way of being.

For me, one of my adventures of learning, unlearning, and relearning centred around being enough. What I am grateful for is that I learnt about the concept of unlearn and relearn and it is working for me. In past years, my friend John had to undergo surgery on the spine and since I am very close to him, I chose to give him company and moral encouragement so that he recuperates fast. He was not able to walk without a stick on the next day of the surgery when the Physiotherapist asked him “ John, you need to forget your old style of walking and practise dragging your left leg first”. For right-handed, our right leg steps at first place and the left leg follows but in John’s case, even though he was right-handed, he was trained for a week how to step the Left leg forward first and the right leg should trail. This appears simple but requires John’s brain to rewire to give new instructions to the left leg. To my surprise, I found John could adapt to this new learning and managed to walk normally in two weeks.  One can not find any flaw in his walking. Silently, John had to unlearn the walking style to adapt to the new one. What worked for him was the Physiological balance out of the new mental model. Learning, it turns out, is the easy part. Unlearning, on the other hand, takes willingness, curiosity, discipline, and a whole lot of humility. I’m starting to realize just how many things there are to unlearn!

Do you dwell on things that happened in your past? Does it pull you out of the present moment, cause you to anxiety, and frustration and limit your ability to enjoy the present? If yes, find out what purpose it is going to serve you now and, in the future, and share the story with yourself. Find out, if you are convinced with the response – this can be your life-changer. The word I associate with learning is deprogramming or undoing.

Bruce Lee once said, “Empty your cup so that it may be filled; become devoid to gain totality.” By emptying my cup, I am making room for new experiences in my life instead of allowing myself to repeat toxic patterns. In other words, one must begin by emptying the cup.

Great leaders are constantly learning. They challenge the current state and know that everyone needs to question assumptions. Sometimes this requires unlearning old habits, changing personal mindsets and, of course, learning new skills. Unlearning involves one of the hardest things in life – letting go. In the process of unlearning and letting go, I have experienced some dramatic changes in several areas like my relationship with self in my Body, mind and soul, relationships with people around me- Family, Professional and Social fronts. I have started identifying beauty in matters that I used to take for granted- this raises my morale and fulfilment. I have started loving myself more than ever before – self-love has taken a step jump giving me greater confidence in what I pursue in life and lastly has phenomenally reduced my mental age. Btw, when was the last time you tried to unlearn something?

Many organizations struggle to change and transform themselves while very few of these aspire to have a “growth mindset” and a “learning culture”. You will be taken by surprise that most often they have been focusing on the wrong thing. The reason is not the challenge of learning; it’s the challenge of unlearning! Unlearning involves stepping outside one mental model and into a new one. But the subconscious brain resists this and prompts  “Let’s go back to what we know, the old way.”- When asked about customer input in the development of the Ford Model, Henry Ford famously said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Ultimately, Henry Ford did give his customers exactly what they wanted. What purpose would a faster horse have served? Faster transportation. That is essentially what they were crying out for. Think about how many times this happens in our workplaces. We know that out of many paradigms and models we’ve built in organizations, there also are ineffective, incomplete, or outdated. Hybrid working, for example, requires huge amounts of unlearning in management, leadership, and systems. It requires unlearning the way organizations are designed. It involves unlearning old employee-employer power dynamics. Even when we start to feel or see change, we see the new model through the old lens. Unlearning does not mean forgetting; it’s not simply replacing something old with something new. It involves rethinking and rewiring to make room for new patterns of thinking. In NLP Terms, it's shifting your mental frame of thinking. When we are receptive to new ideas and we are not hesitant to experience a paradigm shift, we are improving ourselves not to be ruled by our preconceived beliefs or conditioned by incorrect assumptions or impressions that we have developed about people, situations or outcome. By unlearning, we will be able to find wisdom by removing the knowledge barrier.

The biggest challenge in today’s world is the pressure to perform big right now. We first need to identify the external forces that shape or distance us from the core values and try to unlearn and question. It is necessary to have a thirst for knowledge, but when we develop the urge to question our knowledge and relearn whenever necessary by handling our ego we begin to pay more attention to the process because we are truly present for all of it. When our perspective changes,  our understanding, findings and pronouncement change thereby offering new possibilities of experiences. This is what is known as growth.

How to attain a sustainable competitive Advantage?

Organizational learning is the process by which an organization improves itself over time through gaining experience and using that experience to create knowledge. The knowledge created is then disseminated within the organization. Organizational learning is important for all companies, as the creation, retention and percolation of knowledge within the organization strengthens the organization as a whole by improving the competitive advantages, by getting to unravel various insights of the businesses with new wisdom. And, this is a continuous Process by which organizations have to manage their learning capabilities effectively to generate impeccable performance.

Make Small changes every day

The choices you make in Life determine the consequences you create. Whether your habits make you or break you, you are the one who has to deal with long-drawn consequences. As habits exert power and influence over your outcomes, you need to exert might over your habits. You need to take the opening move and produce the changes you want. You need to adjust targets daily and then accomplish and measure them. In the end, reward yourself for every milestone you have achieved.

Focus on growing others

Most people want success for themselves instead of others. They want to embellish glamour, win the awards and want to earn Billions. Having all of these is good indeed though it does not lead to being a Complete Person. A great leader focuses on growing others and this in turn helps leaders grow themselves. The Universe works in magical ways. The law of nature is so precise to balance the affair that the more you give, the more you get back for yourself. When you share your knowledge, skills and competence with people down the Organization, when you spend your resources to develop people in your cadre, you will be surprised to find that your value, status and cadre have already moved up significantly with a visible difference. I have experienced this often in my professional and Social Life.  Developing people also enriches the culture of your Organization or society and this culture when spread in a larger dimension gets embedded into Organization or societal Practices, and raises corporate competence through the lens of the world.

Relearning Executions -Time-pacing & Event pacing

Time pacing is a strategy for competing in fast-changing unpredictable markets by scheduling changes at predictable time intervals. Event pacing is about creating a new product when a promising technology comes out like entering a new market in response to a move by the competitor or making an acquisition before an attractive target is visible on the horizon.

Gordon Morre, the co-founder of Intel Corporation predicted in 1965 that the capacity of the Microprocessor Computer chip would double every 18 months. Moore’s Law is a business objective that Intel Executives took to heart. Over time, intel has been leaving indelible footprints in its industry. Intel is certainly the most visible practitioner of the time pacing. Every nine months, Intel is known to have added a new fabrication facility to its operation. By expanding capacity this way, Intel deters rivals from entering the business and blocks major competition. Companies that march to the beat of time-pacing build momentum and companies that effectively manage event-pacing sustain that momentum without missing important beats.

Relearning alone does not fetch results. It is important to apply relearning into practice through executions and measurements. Measurement is one crucial action, I always emphasize in Organization Development assignments. I am curious to know what is something you would love to unlearn or relearn today. I am also curious to know how you are going to apply your wisdom to execution with a difference.

“The illiterate of the future are not those who can’t read or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” — Alvin Toffler

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