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Struggling With Change? How Individuals (and Businesses) Can Learn Adaptability
Ed Hess:
We've got to retrain our mind, so that instead of seeking confirmation, we're going out there seeking novelty, exploration, discovery. We're actively seeking disconfirming information. We're actively challenging what we believe.
Sean Carr:
Flipping the calendar has become a cliche for goals, resolutions, intentions, and self-improvement. But in 2021, the desire to change or cope with change has taken on added meaning amid the coronavirus pandemic, a major disruption to our lives. Ed Hess, at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business is an expert in high individual and organizational performance. His latest book, Hyper-Learning offers practical pathways to develop, as he says, a new way of being for individual success and a new way of working for business success. In a world where change from the outside is constant, and many of us desire change from within, Ed's here to share how we can simply be better at changing. I'm Sean Carr and welcome to Darden Ideas to Action. Ed, thank you very much for making time to speak with us today, virtually of course, on the socially distant version of Darden Ideas to Action Podcasts. So, great to have you with us.
Ed Hess:
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Looking forward to our conversation.
Sean Carr:
It's the new year. It's a transition time. There's a lot changing, and it's often a time when people start thinking about renewing commitments, and you have written a book about hyper- learning. Can you tell us what hyper-learning is?
Ed Hess:
Yeah. Hyper-learning is continuous, high-quality learning, unlearning and relearning, in order to adapt to the speed of change.
Sean Carr:
Well, let's unpack that a little bit. What did you mean by speed of change?
Ed Hess:
I think everybody listening understands that we're entering, and really have entered a different era. The digital age technology is going to completely transform how we work, how we live and who's going to work. Really, over the next decade, somewhere between 25 and 47% of jobs in the United States are going to be automated. The new norm is going to be change. The new norm is going to be adaptation. The new norm is that the shelf life of what we think we know is going to be very short, and people are going to have work in the digital age if they can excel at doing what the technology can't do well. So, the key to hyper- learning is all about, how do I learn at the speed of change so that I continuously adapt and be able to add value in my job so that I can have meaningful work and a meaningful life?
Sean Carr:
It sounds like I have to learn a lot faster and a lot more than perhaps I ever did before. Is that what you mean?
Ed Hess:
Yes. That's right. You should realize that what got me here may not get me there. Therefore, how can I basically improve my ability to learn faster? What the digital age, because of the speed of change is going to require is that we rewire ourselves. We've got to retrain our mind so that instead of seeking confirmation, we're going out there seeking novelty, exploration, discovery. We're actively seeking disconfirming information. We're actively challenging what we believe. We've really been trained and educated to be well- ordered, human thinking machines. And what we have to be able to do is understand we can't be thinking human machines, following routines, relying on the past. Because the past is no longer going to be a predictor of the future.
Sean Carr:
How do we begin to do that? Give us an example or two of what that might mean in practice.
Ed Hess:
What it means is that we have to take ownership of ourselves — our inner world. We basically have to learn how to manage our ego, manage our mind, and manage our emotions. We've got to redefine what makes us feel good about ourselves, and what makes us feel good about ourselves is the ability to constantly learn and challenge what we're doing. That requires us to quiet our ego, a quiet mind, a calm body, and to basically be in a positive emotional state. You've got develop a mindset, which basically says everything's going to be constantly changing, and impermanence is the norm, and I need to redefine myself.
I'm no longer defined by what I know or how much I know. I'm defined by the quality of my thinking, listening, relating and collaborating. My stories of the world are not reality. They're only my stories of how my world works, and I've got to be open to other stories. I'm not my ideas. I must decouple my ideas from my ego, so that I can basically be willing to listen to others and learn from others. There's going to be a new way of being, and there's going to be a new way of working, which has to be created, which enables human beings to act this way.
Sean Carr:
I think you're saying something really quite profound, which is really asking people to change the narrative they have about themselves and their place in the world and about the world in general.
Ed Hess:
You're spot on, and that is a big deal, because we haven't been trained and taught how to do that. It's a huge behavioral change process. Most people who are good at this, and I'm not saying I'm good, but most people who are good at this, and there are people, will say that this is a lifelong journey. This is what lifelong learning is all about. Yes. You will learn to continuously do new things. This lifelong journey is also going to be about learning to excel cognitively, emotionally and behaviorally.
Sean Carr:
Can organizations cultivate that? If so, how?
Ed Hess:
The answer's yes, they can cultivate it. You can look at Pixar Animation Studios. You can look at Google. You can look at W. L. Gore as examples. There are companies that are basically engaged in huge internal transformation processes to move closer to what we're talking about. I have an organization I work with. It's a global organization, a big organization. Any meeting over 20 minutes is going to be a five-minute mindfulness meditation, and then they have a checklist to go through. If it's a collaboration meeting, they go through their rules of engagement. How do we want to behave in this meeting to optimize our collaborative efforts? And people grade each other, give each other feedback, and help each other be better collaborators.
So, it gets very, very granular. So, the answer is, yes, it is doable. The results can be amazing, and that's the words that people use. The results are transformational. It's a new way of being at work, a new way of working that's designed to be much more humanistic and much more emotionally and psychologically based than just efficiency and linearity. It's to prepare us for a world of non-linearity.
Sean Carr:
We're nearing a year of being in a global pandemic, and if we've seen nothing else, we've seen that people are adaptable, particularly when it comes to work.
Ed Hess:
Most companies that I work with say to me, "Ed, our people have been able to adapt much better than we expected. The performance has not gone down. In fact, in many ways, the performance has gone up." I think what we've been through is an enabler, which should give people confidence that they can go even to higher levels of learning, which is hyper-learning. I can learn how to think differently than the technology.
Sean Carr:
As we sit here at the beginning of 2021, we are all aware of digital transformation occurring all around us. Do you look at the world as a techno optimist or a techno pessimist?
Ed Hess:
The technologies can be used for good, and the technologies can be used for evil. So, it depends on how the technologies are used by the companies that control the technologies. We're in the midst of this now with social media and everything. It's clear that the technologies can hack our thinking and hack our emotions. It's clear that certain companies are doing that. So, that's not good. Technologies, if properly managed, can be a huge positive from a societal viewpoint. If technology is used for humanistic purposes, technology will be an aid, because we will have more knowledge and we will be able to manage ourselves better. So, as the technology advances, we have to continue to advance. We have to continually adapt and take our game to higher levels.
Sean Carr:
Well, that's an inspiring note actually, for us to conclude, and I'm so pleased to have had the opportunity to talk to you about this. I appreciate your sharing the ideas about hyper-learning.
Ed Hess:
Thank you for your interest in my work and thank you for the great conversation and very thoughtful questions. All the best.
Sean Carr:
I'm Sean Carr, and that's it for today's episode of Darden Ideas to Action. Ed Hess is a professor and Batten Executive-in- Residence at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. He is the author of 13 books, over 160 practitioner articles and over 60 cases dealing with growth, innovation and learning cultures, systems and processes. Join us next time for more research analysis and commentary from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. You can subscribe to Ideas to Action on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or Podbean. [inaudible 00:11:11] more expert insights on this topic and more, visit ideas.darden.virginia.edu.
New year, new you? Flipping the calendar has become a cliché for goals, resolutions, intentions and self-improvement. Those good intentions fail all too often, not out of desire but out of an inability to change or adapt. Humans struggle with change, and the stakes of that limitation are getting higher as the world enters an era of massive technological disruption and the coronavirus pandemic challenges our way of life. University of Virginia Darden School of Business Professor Ed Hess is an expert in high individual and organizational performance. His latest book, Hyper-Learning, offers practical pathways to develop “a new way of being” for individual success and “a new way of working” for business success. The Batten Institute’s Sean Carr speaks with Hess to share how we can all simply be better at changing.
Read full transcript here:
Ed Hess:
We've got to retrain our mind, so that instead of seeking confirmation, we're going out there seeking novelty, exploration, discovery. We're actively seeking disconfirming information. We're actively challenging what we believe.
Sean Carr:
Flipping the calendar has become a cliche for goals, resolutions, intentions, and self-improvement. But in 2021, the desire to change or cope with change has taken on added meaning amid the coronavirus pandemic, a major disruption to our lives. Ed Hess, at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business is an expert in high individual and organizational performance. His latest book, Hyper-Learning offers practical pathways to develop, as he says, a new way of being for individual success and a new way of working for business success. In a world where change from the outside is constant, and many of us desire change from within, Ed's here to share how we can simply be better at changing. I'm Sean Carr and welcome to Darden Ideas to Action. Ed, thank you very much for making time to speak with us today, virtually of course, on the socially distant version of Darden Ideas to Action Podcasts. So, great to have you with us.
Ed Hess:
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Looking forward to our conversation.
Sean Carr:
It's the new year. It's a transition time. There's a lot changing, and it's often a time when people start thinking about renewing commitments, and you have written a book about hyper- learning. Can you tell us what hyper-learning is?
Ed Hess:
Yeah. Hyper-learning is continuous, high-quality learning, unlearning and relearning, in order to adapt to the speed of change.
Sean Carr:
Well, let's unpack that a little bit. What did you mean by speed of change?
Ed Hess:
I think everybody listening understands that we're entering, and really have entered a different era. The digital age technology is going to completely transform how we work, how we live and who's going to work. Really, over the next decade, somewhere between 25 and 47% of jobs in the United States are going to be automated. The new norm is going to be change. The new norm is going to be adaptation. The new norm is that the shelf life of what we think we know is going to be very short, and people are going to have work in the digital age if they can excel at doing what the technology can't do well. So, the key to hyper- learning is all about, how do I learn at the speed of change so that I continuously adapt and be able to add value in my job so that I can have meaningful work and a meaningful life?
Sean Carr:
It sounds like I have to learn a lot faster and a lot more than perhaps I ever did before. Is that what you mean?
Ed Hess:
Yes. That's right. You should realize that what got me here may not get me there. Therefore, how can I basically improve my ability to learn faster? What the digital age, because of the speed of change is going to require is that we rewire ourselves. We've got to retrain our mind so that instead of seeking confirmation, we're going out there seeking novelty, exploration, discovery. We're actively seeking disconfirming information. We're actively challenging what we believe. We've really been trained and educated to be well- ordered, human thinking machines. And what we have to be able to do is understand we can't be thinking human machines, following routines, relying on the past. Because the past is no longer going to be a predictor of the future.
Sean Carr:
How do we begin to do that? Give us an example or two of what that might mean in practice.
Ed Hess:
What it means is that we have to take ownership of ourselves — our inner world. We basically have to learn how to manage our ego, manage our mind, and manage our emotions. We've got to redefine what makes us feel good about ourselves, and what makes us feel good about ourselves is the ability to constantly learn and challenge what we're doing. That requires us to quiet our ego, a quiet mind, a calm body, and to basically be in a positive emotional state. You've got develop a mindset, which basically says everything's going to be constantly changing, and impermanence is the norm, and I need to redefine myself.
I'm no longer defined by what I know or how much I know. I'm defined by the quality of my thinking, listening, relating and collaborating. My stories of the world are not reality. They're only my stories of how my world works, and I've got to be open to other stories. I'm not my ideas. I must decouple my ideas from my ego, so that I can basically be willing to listen to others and learn from others. There's going to be a new way of being, and there's going to be a new way of working, which has to be created, which enables human beings to act this way.
Sean Carr:
I think you're saying something really quite profound, which is really asking people to change the narrative they have about themselves and their place in the world and about the world in general.
Ed Hess:
You're spot on, and that is a big deal, because we haven't been trained and taught how to do that. It's a huge behavioral change process. Most people who are good at this, and I'm not saying I'm good, but most people who are good at this, and there are people, will say that this is a lifelong journey. This is what lifelong learning is all about. Yes. You will learn to continuously do new things. This lifelong journey is also going to be about learning to excel cognitively, emotionally and behaviorally.
Sean Carr:
Can organizations cultivate that? If so, how?
Ed Hess:
The answer's yes, they can cultivate it. You can look at Pixar Animation Studios. You can look at Google. You can look at W. L. Gore as examples. There are companies that are basically engaged in huge internal transformation processes to move closer to what we're talking about. I have an organization I work with. It's a global organization, a big organization. Any meeting over 20 minutes is going to be a five-minute mindfulness meditation, and then they have a checklist to go through. If it's a collaboration meeting, they go through their rules of engagement. How do we want to behave in this meeting to optimize our collaborative efforts? And people grade each other, give each other feedback, and help each other be better collaborators.
So, it gets very, very granular. So, the answer is, yes, it is doable. The results can be amazing, and that's the words that people use. The results are transformational. It's a new way of being at work, a new way of working that's designed to be much more humanistic and much more emotionally and psychologically based than just efficiency and linearity. It's to prepare us for a world of non-linearity.
Sean Carr:
We're nearing a year of being in a global pandemic, and if we've seen nothing else, we've seen that people are adaptable, particularly when it comes to work.
Ed Hess:
Most companies that I work with say to me, "Ed, our people have been able to adapt much better than we expected. The performance has not gone down. In fact, in many ways, the performance has gone up." I think what we've been through is an enabler, which should give people confidence that they can go even to higher levels of learning, which is hyper-learning. I can learn how to think differently than the technology.
Sean Carr:
As we sit here at the beginning of 2021, we are all aware of digital transformation occurring all around us. Do you look at the world as a techno optimist or a techno pessimist?
Ed Hess:
The technologies can be used for good, and the technologies can be used for evil. So, it depends on how the technologies are used by the companies that control the technologies. We're in the midst of this now with social media and everything. It's clear that the technologies can hack our thinking and hack our emotions. It's clear that certain companies are doing that. So, that's not good. Technologies, if properly managed, can be a huge positive from a societal viewpoint. If technology is used for humanistic purposes, technology will be an aid, because we will have more knowledge and we will be able to manage ourselves better. So, as the technology advances, we have to continue to advance. We have to continually adapt and take our game to higher levels.
Sean Carr:
Well, that's an inspiring note actually, for us to conclude, and I'm so pleased to have had the opportunity to talk to you about this. I appreciate your sharing the ideas about hyper-learning.
Ed Hess:
Thank you for your interest in my work and thank you for the great conversation and very thoughtful questions. All the best.
Sean Carr:
I'm Sean Carr, and that's it for today's episode of Darden Ideas to Action. Ed Hess is a professor and Batten Executive-in- Residence at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. He is the author of 13 books, over 160 practitioner articles and over 60 cases dealing with growth, innovation and learning cultures, systems and processes. Join us next time for more research analysis and commentary from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. You can subscribe to Ideas to Action on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or Podbean. [inaudible 00:11:11] more expert insights on this topic and more, visit ideas.darden.virginia.edu.
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