Learn Knowledge, Successfully Grow | Be Your Own Chief Learning Officer

Recently, I have had more time to stay at home, so I, like many others, have started to try making cakes, starting with the simplest rice cooker cakes. When I first looked at the various steps taught online, I really thought they were too simple. I felt that as long as I had eggs, milk, sugar, oil, flour and a rice cooker, I could succeed. But in fact, it wasn't like that. When I started to make it myself, I realized there were many hidden secrets. It’s like saying ‘easy to see the flowers, difficult to make them’ — easy to understand, difficult to do.

For example, the bowl for holding the eggs must not be without water and oil, and the egg whites and egg yolks must be completely separated. The first time I made it, I accidentally spilled some egg yolk into the egg whites, which then turned black when I whipped the egg whites. When whipping the egg whites, following the steps online, I tried to use two forks, but I didn’t say how long it would take, or how much effort it would require. When I did this, my hands were almost numb, and I didn’t achieve the desired effect. So I had to buy an electric mixer. Even if I completely followed the steps, and reached the literal requirements at each step, I still couldn’t succeed. It wasn’t until I constantly explored and combined the online methods with my own experience that I finally achieved a relatively satisfactory result.

Therefore, from the experience of learning to make cakes, we can see that learning is a process of constantly learning and exploring, it is also a process of combining theory and practice, and it’s also a process of practicing and then innovating and elevating based on the actual situation.

Times are changing rapidly, and the world is changing quickly. Everyone is talking about learning. From a psychological perspective, learning is the change in behavior or behavioral potential caused by experience, and it’s a lasting change. How to understand the essence of learning? I think the understanding of 'learning and practicing at intervals, how wonderful that is' is quite representative. The 'learning' in 'learning and practicing at intervals' refers to people’s continuous practice, and learning is an organic combination of learning and practice.

Learning is a long-term process, just like daily life, it is indispensable every day.

What should we learn? The content of learning is knowledge. Generally, people’s thinking is that knowledge includes both explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge.For example, as mentioned earlier, to make cakes, there are instructions online for what tools and materials are needed, these are all readily available, and implicit knowledge refers to things like which kind of flour should be chosen, why that particular type should be chosen, and what would happen if it weren't—this is where wheat flour should be used, but is it immediately mixed with egg yolk, or should it be sifted? Many online tutorials don’t mention this. But if you don’t look for these knowledge, you can never make it successfully. Of course, for those who frequently practice, these knowledge may not be so important, because those who frequently practice have already explored certain experiences, perhaps they don’t know why a certain method is needed, but they know that it definitely works. So learning is a continuous combination of theory and practice, and there is a lot of exploration and experimentation along the way. Implicit knowledge is also discovered and unearthed in this process.

Now let's look at work. We have a lot of knowledge to learn. Where should we start?

From a scientific perspective, knowledge is diverse and complex. American educationalist Lums has divided knowledge into four categories: factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge and metacognitive knowledge.

The characteristics of factual knowledge are separation and isolation, which can be memorized through methods.

For example, in human resource work, we all learn behavioral interviewing. Based on the understanding of behavioral interviewing, we only need to know that behavioral interviewing is a method of understanding the various qualities and characteristics of the interviewee by requiring the interviewee to describe specific circumstances of past work or life experiences.

The characteristics of conceptual knowledge are structured and relatively complex. This includes concepts, principles and theories.

This type of knowledge is relatively abstract, and requires questioning yourself to deeply understand it. For example, how did this knowledge come from, when did it emerge, what new theories did it give rise to, what is the relationship between this knowledge and other knowledge, what are the scenarios where it can be applied, and what scenarios cannot? For example, regarding behavioral interviewing, in addition to mastering the definition, we need to know the basic assumptions of behavioral interviewing, which is that a person’s past behavior can predict his future behavior. Behavioral interviewing is conducted through a series of questions to assess the interviewee. The theoretical basis of behavioral interviewing comes from the iceberg model. Based on the candidate’s description of past work events and the interviewer’s questioning and probing, the competency model is used to evaluate the candidate’s qualities and characteristics in past work, and then predict his behavior in the future.

The characteristics of procedural knowledge are that it can be processed, generalized and operable.

In the workplace, we often use this type of knowledge. If used well, it's no problem to meet the job requirements. For example, regarding behavioral interviewing, even if we master a lot of theoretical methods and conceptual knowledge, we still need to use this method to interview a candidate. How to interview a candidate—this requires extracting a workflow, such as extracting relevant questions through behavioral interviewing. For example, ‘When did this happen?’ ‘What were you thinking at the time?’ ‘What steps did you take to solve this problem?’ ‘What results did you achieve and what achievements did you make?’ The candidate's answer must strive to ‘STAR’—that is, for each question, the content to be explained includes: (1) the time, place, project and personnel involved; (2) the task or problem to be completed; (3) the steps or actions taken; (4) the results obtained and achievements made.

For general office workers, learning new knowledge is mainly from procedural knowledge to conceptual knowledge, and sometimes only procedural knowledge is enough to be used in the workplace.

However, if you want to develop and have potential, to be innovative, you need to learn meta-knowledge.

This type of knowledge reflects a person’s bottom-level ability, such as logical thinking ability and self-reflection ability. In 2018, Fei Fei, a world-renowned AI scientist who won the “World’s Outstanding People” award, chose to study Tibetan medicine in Tibet for a year after graduating from Princeton University. She believed that Tibetan medicine gave her a lot of inspiration and methods. It seems to be irrelevant, but it gave her many gains in the end. World-famous architect Mr. Bernard Roth often reads ‘Tao Te Ching’, and he said that this book had a greater influence on his architecture than other things. This is what people say ‘skills are in the poetry’. This is a kind of meta-knowledge.

As mentioned earlier, if you follow the procedure to make cakes and succeed, some people will continue to explore the characteristics of each ingredient, the combination, the molecular structure, etc. When they truly understand these knowledge, they will know what can be done, and what innovations can be made.

For each of us, learning ability is the greatest personal competitiveness. Lifelong learning, learning without end. Everyone on the learning journey has no resting pavilion, only continuous effort. Bell once said that truly successful people are successful growing people. Wish everyone to continue growing and succeeding in learning, and become your chief learning officer.