Why adults have trouble reinventing themselves

A long time back I worked with a mother and her daughter. In kindergarten the girl was vibrant, playful, sociable and inventive. But in Grade 1, everything changed. The teacher, Miss Munroe, was disturbed that the girl couldn’t sit still, that she wrote letters backwards, that she couldn’t read and or do arithmetic as well as the other children. So Miss Munroe put her in the special learning class, or as the other kids referred to it…the dummies class. Her mother was surprised because the girl had always seemed so bright and so good at many things. But the teachers said it was the best choice for everyone concerned. The girl disliked this dummies class even more than regular class and sat sullen refusing to do anything at all. The other children began to exclude her on the playground. Her self esteem plummeted and she soon isolated herself from friends and family.

Learning HOW to learn rather than memorizing rote facts

Her mother grew upset about the situation and so did research on alternative school programs that offered a more flexible curriculum. She eventually got her daughter into a school with a self-directed learning program. This was where students were asked HOW they wanted to learn instead of having to follow one standard curriculum. That’s when everything changed. The students suggested that instead of learning plant science from a book, that they would make their own vegetable garden together instead. So that’s what they did for half the school year. Instead of memorizing the Pythagoras theorem, they constructed multi-colored models to learn about how it applies in the real world. Instead of memorizing facts about the inventor, Edison, they produced a short documentary about his life. This girl eventually became a top student in this experiential learning environment, because she needed to move in order to think.

Do you need to move in order to think?

In his groundbreaking TED talk “Do Schools Kill Creativity?“, Sir Kenneth Robinson, tells the story of the great choreographer, Gillian Lynne. She was always a dancer at heart, and needed to move in order to think. Many people who are not thriving in the education system or their organization are actually very bright and capable, but they are stuck in a sitting position all day long, when they actually need to move to think properly.

This girl went on to finish high school and 7 years of postsecondary education with excellent marks. Soon after graduating she started her own business and she has been able to continually reinvent her career the last 20 years. Now this was someone who struggled with dyslexia for years, who had to go to the library for the blind to just get through a book. And this young student was me.

Here is my geeky Grade 8 photo at University Hill Secondary School. Thank goodness there was such a great program there in the 1970′s because it that made all the difference to me being a contributing member of society. I was lucky; I had a mother who stood up for me. I could have easily ended up like my friend in the special education class who was pregnant by 15 and spent her early adult years as a drug addict living on welfare.

Here’s a photo of my mother who went to bat for me. She died of cancer when I was only 27 years old but in the last year of her life she did get that chance to see me on a video speak before an audience of 1400 college students. A proud moment for a mother who worried her child would never make it in the world. I later learned to break free of dyslexia through Brain Gym. By doing the exercises every day for several years and going on to teach it to others I now read quickly with excellent comprehension and have no other traces of dyslexia. Many learning disabilities are now much more easily overcome through such excellent organizations as The Educational Kinesiology Foundation.

What happens when you don’t know how to reinvent very well?

An extraordinary number of the young people who went through this creative, self directed program went on to lead successful lives as adults in creative and dynamic professions, even if they came into the program as a “problem child”. One reason is that they learned to continually reinvent and therefore could thrive in a variety of environments. They were taught how to create something from nothing, how to choose their response, and how to ascribe they own meaning to situations. In contrast, in regular schools, children were taught only one way to learn and were allowed only a narrow range of responses and interpretations they could have about their environment. They were never taught to question assumptions, or how to consciously form their own opinions or interpretations.

Change resistant people hold organizations back

As a result, many adults with this kind of mindset can feel helpless when things like the economy turns down, or they have to learn new software, or they must take on another role at work. From years of surveying individuals and leaders in organizations the majority of people complain, resist, and even to sabotage a necessary reinvention …all because they just have a weak skill set for reinvention. They just don’t know how to create something out of nothing, or how to choose their response, or how to create a sense of meaning for what they’re doing.

Humans view themselves as creative until they are taught not to

When I recently asked a room full of adults to raise their hands if they called themselves creative, only about 1/5th of the room did so. When I ask a roomful of kindergarten students the same question, all the hands went up. So the good news is that humans view themselves as creative, until they are taught not to. Therefore, the skill of reinvention, or understanding of the creative process, is actually an innate ability that some people just forgot. If you got dressed this morning in a different way than yesterday, you can reinvent. If you negotiated your way through traffic today, you used the creative process. All you really have to do is remember your innate skills and apply them to whatever situation you now need to reinvent.

Teaching people how to learn, how to create something from nothing, makes more sense than teaching facts that will soon become irrelevant. Having spent years in the arts while also coaching change leaders, Carla couldn’t help but notice that leaders with some kind of artistic training could lead change more fluidly than those without. What did they have that others didn’t have? The ability to let go of assumptions, thrive in chaos, redesign and reframe … in other words they could learn on a dime.

The most indispensable people in the world today therefore are those who know how to learn. So is our education system doing enough to prepare students to be indispensible in this way, or is it just preparing them to be good contestants on Jeopardy?

There are thousands of students who would actually contribute greatly to the world, but who can’t survive a system that only rewards factual regurgitation. The good news is that the forest floor is alive with new life with alternative forms of education that prepare learners to thrive in our brave new world.

But if you think back on challenging experiences personally, in your community or in history, you can almost always see how they seeded something new and creative. At the personal level, I can think of the time I bought all that Nortel stock just before it tanked. It motivated me to learn about real estate investing, which I grew to love. Many historians say that the Renaissance in Europe was seeded by the Plague. One third of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages died from the Plague. The surviving relatives took their inheritances and funded scientists, inventors and artists to help their society re-invent itself so that something like the Plague wouldn’t happen again.

Times of crisis are easiest to convince people (or yourself) to try something new, because clearly the old just isn’t working anymore.

Negativity can be the kick in the butt we all need to finally make a creative change. One way to un-trigger yourself is to form a habit of seeing negativity as the seed of new development.

Just remember as innovation expert Sir Ken Robinson says “In the coming decade creativity will be as important as literary.”