What can I learn through my mind’s imagination that is real, and accurate?

What can I learn through my mind’s imagination that is real and accurate, or rather how much can I really learn just through my mind, through thinking?

I keep getting this vision of Dancing with the Stars – you know, the show where stars are paired up with dancers and compete. I don’t really watch the show, but I understand the concept. And I was thinking if I wanted to learn ballroom dancing, well, what might I do?

I could read about ballroom dancing; I could get one of those books that have the dance steps illustrated with 1, 2, 3, 4 arrows; I could watch ballroom dancing on TV; I could observe others ballroom dancing live and in person; and I could do ballroom dancing myself. At what point am I learning ballroom dancing? I think this came forward for me as an example, because while I can dance, dance, dance around a room, I have no skill in paired, structured ballroom dancing at all – just ask my husband.

So at what point would I be learning ballroom dancing?

When I go to the inner for an answer, I get this image and feeling of being in a room full of air movement, the sound of fabric sweeping by me, the sounds and the movement of dancers dancing in a room. And then I have the feeling of being part of the flow, being in the movement of the dance myself. My whole body gliding in circles around a room, the centrifugal force arcing round and round and round. That’s all in my imagination – I can imagine a multi-sensory experience. But, I still have no skill in paired, structured ballroom dancing.

To really truly learn it I’d have to do it, be in it, to experience it for myself. Without the experience I can really only guess what I would learn – head, heart, body learn. And I’d have to choose to be present in the moment.

I realize this is an example of learning a physical skill. So what if what I want to learn isn't in the physical skill realm – like, let’s say, I want to understand why a specific demographic or psychographic group interacts with a totally new to them product or service. How do I learn experientially then?

How would you?

LearningConnect has Something to Say - Part 2 - Learning Experientially

LearningConnect honors and supports the way human beings learn new things experientially!

I went to sleep last night open to receiving info about LearningConnect and the aspect of learning experientially. After a great download I’m ready to share a few short stories and examples of how experientiality (I know – I just had to make up a word) is supported and expressed in LearningConnect.

“I’ll remember this experience for the rest of my life.” Cheftestant, Top Chef. I swear, I just heard this on Top Chef and I think I’ve heard in every last few minutes of Top Chef for however many seasons it’s been on (or really from any contestant on almost any reality based TV show). Likely, we’ve all said this at one time or another ourselves. “I’ll remember this experience for the rest of my life.” I don’t recall ever saying “I’ll remember this thought for the rest of my life.” And yet when most of the world does consumer research, it’s at a desk doing breakouts sifting through data or it’s in a dark backroom listening over speakers to a conversation we are not part of. I’m not saying sitting at your desk or in a backroom you’re not learning something, but you’re not learning through a personal experience – one that engages your entire being – your body, your heart, and your mind.

Why a personal experience? Why can’t I just think? You know, I think therefore I am. Hmmmm … Why indeed?

Well, for what it’s worth, this is what I think. A personal experience gives us a story, a memory we can hold onto and recall, and in an instant can transport us back to a particular place and time and feeling. We carry the stories of our experiences with us like tattoos. The experience itself is held in our cellular memory and even has the power to bring back scents, colors, sounds. And even if we’ve had an experience with someone else, their experience is different than ours, because we are unique individuals with different make ups, histories, beliefs, expectations. So my experience is unique to me and your experience is unique to you even if we’ve traveled side by side through our entire lives.

Maybe that’s why learning experientially is so important to me. The experiences help me remember what is important – and it’s always been easier for me to remember a story and for that matter to share a story, than a chart of data or even a data point. So when I started working in the realm of consumer research, I became obsessed, simply obsessed with people’s stories. But you know, even someone else’s stories are hard to connect with and know exactly what to do next.

I realized I needed to connect with my own personal experience to be able to connect to the experience of someone else in a meaningful way, to know what to listen for, to be able to connect with the unsaid, to be able to recognize the special, the significant, to open to the unanticipated and unexpected. So if I wanted to understand why someone brushed their teeth in a certain way with a certain brand of toothpaste, I needed to connect with my personal everyday experience of brushing my teeth my certain way with my certain brand of toothpaste and why.

It’s really not that it’s all about me, but when it comes right down to it, I can only learn within my own self and through my own experience. It might as well be as rich as possible.

I’m talented, but I cannot escape myself. You know the saying, “wherever you go there you are.” So true, so true. I can’t even get out of my own way. I can’t even begin to be objective. What I can do is really know my own experience and then understand how my experience shapes and shades my world view. From there I can choose to alter my perspective or seek other experiences to help me expand and open to different perspectives – and connect to others with different experiences, different stories, different perspectives, different world views. Not better or worse, not greater or less than, just different. So consider for a moment being a member on a team. Each person has their own perspective, their own world view and we’re all trying to learn about our consumer. Yikes!

"The difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is a great difference between the beholders.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

There’s this tourist and traveler comparison that I love.

So I’m a tourist and as a tourist I go to some far off exotic land and I have an agenda of activities, I observe the culture at a safe distance, go to the must-see places, maybe a museum or two, eat at restaurants recommended by the hotel concierge or chain restaurants familiar from home, look for newspapers and TV from home, take lots of beautiful pictures of beautiful things to post on FaceBook , and I probably only spend a day or two or maybe three in each city – you get the idea. I’ve had a great experience, but how much new did I learn about myself, about the culture, about the people who live there? I feel like I just touched the surface. This is parallel to my experience in a traditionally formatted (really good) consumer research process.

As a traveler, I immerse into the culture. Move into the rhythm of the place, slow down, spend some time, learn some of the language, wander maybe even get lost in the city, meet regular people doing regular everyday things, have totally unplanned unexpected experiences, if I’m lucky I may even be invited for a meal at someone’s home, I connect. I know when I leave I have been touched by my experience deeply, I’ve learned so much about myself, about the culture, about the individuals I’ve met. I have stories to share that make me laugh and cry and desire more and more and more of that! This is what LearningConnect has given me and many, many others who have chosen to LearningConnect.

In the structure of LearningConnect there are several ways team participants travel and learn experientially. As facilitators of the process, we design activities for the team to do, often even before we meet for the StartUp. Activities are designed to help each individual “observe” their own experience, to slow down enough to take notice of all the physical and emotional details, to become aware of their own past and current experiences related to the topic the team wants to learn more about. Sometimes we ask team members to recall and share important imprinting stories from their childhood. Sometimes we dust off and reflect on stories we haven’t thought about for a long time. And that’s all before we take them to visit their consumers or customers. When we do, the workshops and individual visits are all face to face (no backroom) and whenever feasible we send the team out to visit people in their homes, to shop with them, to travel into their world. And yes, sometimes if they’re lucky, they are invited for a memorable meal. Each team member is touched in different ways. They come back with pictures and stories that make us cry and laugh and want more and more and more of that!

LearningConnect honors and supports the way human beings learn new things experientially!

More tomorrow.

LearningConnect has Something to Say - and I'm Listening

You know how you travel through life and then whap! You’re back in a place you thought you’d resolved. It’s like a board game that keeps circling you around to the beginning, to square one, over and over and over again until the game is complete. You might be different every time you pass or land on the first square, you might collect $200, and then again, you might not even notice. So here I am after years of working with the very alive and powerful LearningConnect matrix that is much more than a process, it’s the source of my two companies, the core expression of the values and tenants of what I stand for personally, and why I’m here at this time and in this place.

What comprises the core of LearningConnect created the seed that has become the Ah Ha! and IdeaConnect companies and in turn they have nurtured and supported LearningConnect. A clear metaphor doesn’t neatly come to mind to help explain how linked these are for me. Just let me say, they are living and breathing on their own. And as a living energetic matrix, LearningConnect has a unique personality that although it came through me, I am still learning about every day.

So this time I am noticing I’m back to square one. The little life dramas that are causing me to slow my pace this time round to notice are not all that unique or relevant other than they are getting my attention. And it’s clearly time to articulate again what’s at the core of LearningConnect and why what’s at the core makes a difference and why any of us should even care.

So here’s the start. I’ll be illuminating a different aspect of what makes LearningConnect tick every day over the course of a few days or weeks or however long it takes.

LearningConnect honors and supports the way human beings learn new things – slowly, experientially, individually, emotionally, multidimensionally, upon reflection, building on prior knowledge, sharing with others on the journey.

Let's start with "slowly."

Human beings learn new things slowly (over time): I know this is not what anyone wants to hear. We all want what we want right now! Fast! We don’t have time to sit around! Why does it have to take so long? Great question. The parental answer: it just does! But I’m not your parent. And anyway, when did “slow” get such a bad rap?

Learning new things takes time.

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” Einstein

It takes time to be aware of what is presented to us in each new moment. It takes time to notice what has been unobserved. It takes time to understand the relevance of a new awareness, to help our new awareness find its place in our internal belief systems and mental models. It takes time for us to learn something truly new.

And, then it takes time to be ready to shift.

The shift itself can happen in an instant – can rock your outer world, can alter your inner world so profoundly you don’t remember what the world was like before this moment right now. And it’s easy to forget, maybe even desirable to forget, just how long the new learning took us.

Ready for complexity to the power of, oh I don’t know, a million? On a team, learning something new together, you guessed it, takes time. Everyone brings their own way of seeing and being and shifting. It takes time to slow down enough to get grounded and to be able to bring our unique perspectives, awareness and way of being into the collective. Some of us are great at seeing the whole big picture all at once; some of us are great at identifying all the itsy bitsy pieces; some of us can move easily between the whole and its parts. One way of seeing and being is not better than another, just different.

Bottom line, because I know that’s what you’ve been waiting for: It takes time to move from the many unique and individual new learnings to a collective new learning – and isn’t that why you work together in teams in the first place – to get to an aligned collective knowledge so you can make the big hairy decisions and take relevant and meaningful action?

So, I leave you with a few old adages that still work for me. Slow and steady wins the race. Go slow to go fast. Slow down and smell the roses. Speed kills.