Learning by Doing

I just can’t help quoting Josh Kaufman the editor of Personal MBA:

“The Personal MBA is a DIY approach to business education - it's taking responsibility for learning into your own hands. The best way to learn about business is to spend time gathering the most useful concepts you can, then putting them to use in the real world. Experience teaches better than any professor can.

Sure, you'll make a few mistakes along the way - everyone does. The important distinction is that, instead of doing meaningless homework, you're actively building your own business or improving your career.

When it comes down to it, formal coursework is overrated. You can learn more (and have more fun) by doing it yourself.”

That is exactly what I started doing long before I learned about PMBA - gathering the most useful concepts to this blog in order to be able to use them.

This week I spent two days in a strategy meeting. I was asked to make a summary of a discussion based on balanced scorecard viewpoints (which I happen to know inside out, having just prepared a presentation of them).

I also had two days of leadership training this week and we discussed among other things the 7 habits, which I had blogged last week.

Manager’s Toolbox really proved to be useful during strategy and leadership workshops and is serving its purpose in improving my management and leadership skills.

Now I will to return to my office and start using the new skills in real life – learning by doing. Nobody ever learned to play piano by listening to others or reading notes. They have learned by practicing. The same way I have to start doing what I heard from other people and what I read from several books. Start the real learning by doing.

Is there any skill you have learned without practicing it? Without learning by doing?



ps. During the four days I spent in workshops, over 4000 people around the world watched my BSC presentation and almost 500 of them downloaded it, causing my customer satisfaction to reach high levels!