How the unlearn, relearn & breakthrough cycle works
By: Irfan Shehzad
Tags: Agile, Lean, Success, Transformation, Unlearn

“To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.” (Lao Tzu)

The above quote is very much relevant to the way things work now a days. I recently read a book Unlearn by Barry O'Reilly that takes you through the journey of transforming your business through product innovation and it works both at an individual and organizational level. The author starts with the need of why to unlearn at the first place and the approach is so thorough that it even describes how to unlearn the obstacles to unlearning. With real life scenarios and case studies, it provides you the insights on how to reach a breakthrough with a step by step approach and relearning the new ways of working. The best part is about unlearning with customers whilst urging the management not to believe what they hear - rather go, see and talk to the customers.

Consider this statement from the book where it says ‘one of the best mechanisms we have for recalibrating our perspective of the world, making our unconscious incompetence visible, and for checking if what we believe to be true is actually true, is soliciting candid feedback from our customers and then putting it to use.’ This statement, if correctly put into practice, can yield fruitful results but before it does, CEOs, executives, and managers need to stop limiting the potential of on an organization through command & control rather provide a conducive environment for human creativity, ingenuity and expression to flourish. This outside the box thinking will lead to innovation and bringing new ideas into life.

Peter Ducker said, “We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don’t spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop. Half the leader I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.” The trouble with most of the organizations is finding ways and means to discard old behaviors and adopt new ones as it requires for the leadership team to step back, reflect and think through whether the old approach will bring different results or even if the same approach will deliver similar results. Author mentions Fogg’s research into behavior design and exploring methods and models for creating new behaviors. And it starts with taking small steps with iterative feedback loops that will provide the input for relearning. This in turn helps develop the new behavior and pivot the way towards breakthrough.

Another important perspective is how to build an incentives based model in an organization for employees to gear towards unlearning and relearning. Author provides an example of ‘Netflix’ quoting Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, a book written by Patty Mccord where she says that her litmus test was being able to stop any of the company’s employees anywhere in the office and ask this question: “What are the five most important things the company is working on for the next six months?” And if the employees were not able to respond immediately, then it meant that the leadership was failing to do its job.

Barry O’Reilly has done a great job by putting an endeavor to change the perspective of how we think and how can we come out of our comfort zones and try something new. By giving real life examples from individual tennis stars like Serena Williams to organizations such as Capital One (a cloud engineering company), IAG Catapult, Amazon, Netflix, Disney and NASA, he portrays how the courage and humility can shape a mindset that paves the way to a cycle of unlearning, learning and breakthrough. Leaders can rethink their definition of success in light of what this book reveals and the more organizations adapt this approach, the more innovative products will be seen in the market. It was a treat to read the book. :)