In business, as in life in general, its important to learn from what we do and to change and adapt to make sure we don’t repeat our mistakes ( I know it sounds like stating the obvious but we humans have a nasty tendency of not doing that which is obviously good for us). Ed Batista across on his blog Executive Coaching and Change Management, helps us joins the dots to get the full picture and calls it “the experiential learning cycle”.

“ACT: Do something–anything, in fact. Run a meeting, give a presentation, have a difficult conversation. (One of the most valuable aspects of this model is the way in which it allows us to turn every experience into a learning opportunity. The challenge, of course, is that we rarely complete the cycle and leave most potential learning untapped.)

REFLECT: Look back on your experience and assess the results. Determine what happened, what went well and what didn’t.

CONCEPTUALIZE: Make sense of your experience. Seek to understand why things turned out as they did. Draw some conclusions and make some hypotheses.

APPLY: Put those hypotheses to the test. Don’t simply re-act. Instead, have a conscious plan to do things differently to be more effective. And begin the cycle again.

But the value of these models isn’t in their conceptual elegance–it’s in their ability to help you be more effective in the world. Applying them shouldn’t be a time-consuming or difficult process, and in some cases it may involve nothing more than a few moments of thought after an experience and prior to its repetition. In other cases, you may want to use more formal methods to complete the cycle, such as keeping a journal, or holding feedback sessions with colleagues–whatever works best for you. The point is to recognize how much can be learned from our every experience and interaction, and to begin to capture more of that learning on a consistent basis.”

An interesting point is the action orientation of the paradigm, in other words the cycle does not start with, “what am I thinking about doing”, then thinking “what happens if I do it” and “what other ways could I possibly do it”? Then act. It’s act first, then analysis and deduce better ways to go forward. This is not to say that you act without planning but don’t over plan and over analysis before acting.

Tom Peters says “Read, fire, aim!” He goes onto say “Americans are a pragmatic, impatient lot. From time to time our “shoot first, ask questions later” approach causes problems. Sometimes grave ones. But mostly, throughout our history, the rush to do something has paid off.” He also says:” “Dumb” moves teach us, remarkably quickly, a “feel” for whatever it is. By putting it together wrong, we learn more and gain mastery faster, I’d judge, than if we’d followed instructions and by some miracle put it together right the first time. Each wrong turn, shanked golf shot, or flubbed keyboard instruction teaches us something about the journey, game, program. Often, in my experience, our tomfoolery reveals facets of the product that even the designer didn’t consider.”

“You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.”
Anthony Robbins

“Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.”
G. M. Trevelyan