The world is not flat
Never stop learning
While having a lovely evening with friends recently, something happened during the events that threw my whole world upside-down. This is a story of why you never stop learning.
Our close friends had recently been engaged and we were having an early Christmas celebration since we wouldn’t see them on the day.
The evening’s festivities started off with a few pints at my partner’s work before decanting our drunken and jocular bodies into the bride- and groom-to-be’s gaff.
It was there when something happened.
Something terrible.
I mis-spoke.
And my whole world inverted, even if just for a second.
I’d used the wrong word in a sentence.
Though the intended meaning was understood, I was called out in my mis-used verbiage.
What’s wrong with that? Well, I didn’t know I was using the word incorrectly. This wasn’t a case of reaching for one word and retrieving another, mistakingly. No, I firmly believed I’d had the correct word.
In fact, we proceeded to argue for the next few drunken minutes of mockery, them against me.
The word? Empathy.
As it turned out, I’d been using sympathy and empathy the wrong way round — and, oh boy! did they enjoy pointing it out!
I don’t remember when I learnt the words or how I learned them, but I do remember being very purposeful in my use of them — always trying to use the right word for the right context (unaware it was the wrong way round, of course).
After an overly-gesticulated and half-drunken stumble through the argument, including dictionaries on phones and numerous examples, I had succumb and was ready to accept the reality of my embarrassing mistake wholeheartedly.
In case anyone else is in the same boat, here’s the difference:
I can sympathise with your situation as I have been there myself (death or loss in the family, money problems, difficult situations, break-ups).
I can empathise with your situation as I have the ability to imagine your situation in my mind, though I have not directly experienced what you are going through.
So, what?
It’s another reminder of how fundamental the concept of you never stop learning really is.
This was a simple mistake. And it although it was ignorance, it wasn’t passive ignorance. I had made efforts but my efforts were based on incorrect baseline data — I had the wrong definitions in the first place.
I can’t remember how or when I learnt the definitions, and that’s not important for this conversation. But what is important is that over my life I’d dug deep to make sure I was using, what I thought, was the right word for the right circumstance.
To bring this back to the workplace, or any aspect of life, and learning — as humans with strong beliefs we often spend a lot of time engraining our beliefs further and further.
Take the Prince2 die hards versus Scrum versus Safe versus Lean, or more low level, think about the phrase, this is how we’ve always done it.
God, I hate that phrase, and I’ve been guilty of using it, too.
But that phrase is the death of open-mindedness.
That phrase is the nail in the coffin of keeping with the times.
Why? Because it immediately shuts down any prospects or avenues of agility or change or growth.
Nobody says that’s how we’ve always done it and then goes but I’m happy to completely change my thinking immediately!
But it goes further than that. It’s central to our abilities to pivot and adapt to paradigm shifting changes.
Whether it’s buzz words and jargon — Web3, Blockchain, DLT, The Metaverse — or whether it’s something more fundamentally phrased — we used to be physical, now we’re digital — how many banking execs screaming THAT’S HOW WE’VE ALWAYS DONE IT! can you hear in your head right now?
Yes, many incumbent organisations have digitised some workflows and processes, and some better than others. But fundamentally, so many incumbents are still living in a physical world of lead times and expected presence whereas the world has fundamentally changed the paradigm and moved to a digital world of instantaneity, async, and the digital self.
I wrote a while ago on the differences between digitisation and digitilisation — many, many incumbents are still doing the former. They’re not embracing the realisation that their world has changed, and it’s their customers that suffer for it.
I’ve recently moved home and the gaps in updating my details between providers are wide!
We have to remember that we once believed that the earth was flat! We certainly cannot assume we know everything, and we must check ourselves and seek new knowledge and understanding, but more importantly, we then must act on them!
