Ancora Imparo
“And still I am learning!”
– Michelangelo
“Learning on the job is essential to judging!”
– John Paul Stevens, Associate Justice United States Supreme Court (1920- 2019)
“The New” is upon us!
We can cook prepackaged meals in moments, serve them on plates that double as garbage disposal units, diagnose and treat cancer with internal camera scans, download movies and watch them privately on personal electronic devices, make wireless phone calls while driving, and leave now and be in the Temple of Wudang Shan tomorrow night, with a guide and a wardrobe we ordered in flight. It’s a world which demands the ability and the willingness to learn. Now, Tomorrow and Forever!
It’s a relatively unforgiving place, this instant future. If you’re not on top of what’s happening, you can be left behind in a heartbeat. (Ask anyone over the age of fifteen.)
But it’s not just about what’s NEW, but about what’s New to You.
There’s all that information and all those areas of study that didn’t come from business school or twenty-five years of corporate practice.
As I talk to artists, professors, athletes, leaders and professionals, I am struck by how much I don’t know. Yet out of my “well informed ignorance,” I keep discovering that “what is true” in the arts, is also (surprisingly) “true in athletics.” And “what is true” in the performance and communication arts, is seemingly also true in science. The same “deep magic” feeds and nourishes art & science. The same sense of “endless willing discovery” makes the voyage successful & rewarding.
Here’s a key discovery, the more silos an individual has stormed, or mastered, the less likely they are to be “a shit.” Arrogance thrives in a closed system. As sunlight, air, questions and curiosity penetrate, humility and discovery travel along.
It’s fundamentally about an attitude: The interested anticipation of what’s next vs. the resigned or dark certainty of having seen it all – of knowing it all already. One mind leads and motivates people, the other slowly kills.
Choose the mind you would willingly serve, then become that person!
Consider that the Chief Executive Officer might also quite legitimately become the Chief Learning Officer.
“And still, you are learning!”
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