Why you need to be a part of a Learning Community

Seth's Godin blog post on June 4, 2009 was really encouraging to me because this is the type this is the type of learning experiences we are seeking to build with our Learning Communities which we are hoping to launch throughout the EFCA later this month for youth workers.

My friend Bill Allison says that we need more guides on the side than we need sages on the stage. Another friend, Steve Hudson drilled into me that training (or reading books) is for understanding but we need coaching to help us work on implementation.

Only about 20% of people, once they get new information...information they need...really know what to do with it. Most people know it's good information. They know they need that information. They know it's important. The problem is their not sure what to do with it or there is no one keeping them accountable to make the changes or adjustments that need to be made.

Seth's post is the longest one from him I've ever seen. Here is the portion I most connected with:

Learning: The educational lesson that I found the most striking is that the book knowledge was easy to transmit and not particularly essential. Once you get this far, it's sort of a given that you're good at school. We read more than a hundred books, and the book learning happened quickly . Our culture has done an amazingly good job at teaching talented people how to learn concepts from books.

I taught for five to twenty hours a week, and very little of it was about the books. So, if concepts from books are easy, what’s hard?

Doing it.

Picking up the phone, making the plan, signing the deal. Pushing ‘publish.’ Announcing. Shipping.
We spent a lot of time on this area. Every morning, each person came in prepared to push someone in the group to overcome the next hurdle. This is what growth looks like, and it was energizing to be part of.