I’m fond of the running theme of Lawrence of Arabia in which our hero challenges the wisdom that it is written that things are inevitable. His mantra is nothing is written.
I use that as the starting point for an article for Learning Technologies about some of the pitfalls I see in organisational training.
The temptation to take our anxieties and render them as certainties is not confined to deserts and camel rides. We seek to tame the unknown and the complex by eliminating doubt and – so we believe – risk… Real learning takes place at the edges of our comfort zones. Neither at the point where we are so bound up with fear that we lose control of our bladder, nor at the point where everything is safe and predictable.
I look at things like the tyranny of the explicit, with a few inputs from A General Theory of Love and St Exupery, as well as my nephew peeing on a bonfire, to illustrate my argument. I touch on things like what Viv and I call the teacher trance – the sorts of things that push training towards David Brent levels of awkwardness.
The piece appears in Learning Technologies’ latest magazine. It shows up in an online viewer but you can get the whole thing as a pdf. And here’s just my article in pdf form, a bit easier to read I find.
