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What Motivates Lifelong Learners
- John Hagel III
Many leaders think it’s the fear of losing your job. They’re wrong.
Looking to stay ahead of the competition, companies today are creating lifelong learning programs for their employees, but they are often less effective than they could be. That’s because they don’t inspire the right kind of learning: The creation of new knowledge (and not just the transfer of existing knowledge about existing skills). The author’s research shows that those who are motivated to this kind of learning are spurred not by fear of losing their jobs, which is often the motivation given, but by what he calls the “passion of the explorer.” The article describes this mindset and how companies can create it among their employees.
It seems that everyone in business today is talking about the need for all workers to engage in lifelong learning as a response to the rapid pace of technological and strategic change all around us. But I’ve found that most executives and talent management professionals who are charged with getting their people to learn aren’t thinking about what drives real learning — the creation of new knowledge, not just the handoff of existing knowledge. As a result, many companies are missing opportunities to motivate their employees to engage in the kind of learning that will actually help them innovate and keep pace with their customers’ changing needs.
- John Hagel III recently retired from Deloitte, where he founded and led the Center for the Edge , a research center based in Silicon Valley. A long-time resident of Silicon Valley, he is also a compulsive writer, having published eight books, including his most recent one, The Journey Beyond Fear . He will be establishing a new Center to offer programs based on the book.
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