Friday, July 12, 2013
Tony, a senior staff, was reviewed by his manager. The
results are not so good. Even John is better than Tony. John is junior staff. The reviewer said that John is better and smarter than Tony.
The senior staff, of course have a lot of experiences, more
than their junior. Why some of them not so smart? Why are some staffs being an expert while the
others are still the novice? Some of them have more experience but their
quality is different. Why?
Well, experiences are a collection of data/information.
Experiences are not knowledge. Experience are not represent the quality,
knowledge are.
Experiences are only the raw materials. Every man needs to
process the experience in order to create knowledge in their mind. That process
is called as "Learning".
How to process an experience becomes knowledge? To answer
this question, David Kolb has formulated "Learning" Cycle (a.k.a.
Experiential Learning Cycle).
(Experiential) Learning Cycle
For instance, a staff has an experience on something. Having
experience is just the first step. The experience needs to be reflected (2nd
step) and conceptualized (3rd step). A new knowledge is created
after the third step.
Next, you should test the new knowledge. You will find, may
be some parts of it are true and some else are false. Then you have a new
experience again (or at least new point of view). The experience should be
reflected and conceptualized again. This cycle should always be performed.
Each cycle creates new knowledge and new quality.
Now imagine, John performs learning cycle every day. He
creates new knowledge every day. Of course, his quality increases.
Tony, never do that. He just repeats the same job with the
same way. If he has worked for 10 year, actually he is only has a day-knowledge
that is repeated 3650 times. Nothing is new.
John is better than Tony because John always learn, changes his experience to knowledge.
