Are you a hacker?

I don’t mean the type of person who leaks the diplomatic cables of the United States government (but curiously, not of the Russian or Ecuadorian governments).

Nor do I mean the heroes who disrupt the education of children.

No – by “hacker” I mean the type of person who gets the job done, come hell or high water. Someone who refuses to accept barriers, but rather expects them; and if they can’t smash them, they climb over them, dig under them, or drill through them.

According to Oxford professor Paulo Savaget, people who adopt a hacker mentality at work enjoy the process of finding work-arounds. Which, I’m sorry to concede, does not represent everyone in the Learning & Development profession.

Over the course of my career, I’ve witnessed a lot of talk among my peers about what should and shouldn’t be done to improve learning outcomes and hence business performance… but not a lot of action.

And I’ve heard all the excuses to justify it: “I haven’t been trained in that”; “We don’t have the technology”; “We don’t have the right culture”. Which again I’m sorry to concede, I’ve been quick to judge as symptoms of ineptitude, laziness or apathy.

Then an article by Eikris Biala caught my eye: What’s more important than learning theory? Intrigued by the headline, I read her piece and the following quote resonated:

“It slowly dawned on me that, while learning theory is important, so too is challenging the limiting beliefs of our learning community.”

She cited the example of coaches changing the behaviour of online course developers, and to me that underscores the inclusivity of the phrase “learning community” – it includes we L&D professionals alongside our target audience.

And so it dawned on me that it’s not necessarily ineptitude, laziness or apathy that stops many of us from making it happen. It could be the lack of belief we have in our own abilities.

When you’re aware of your limiting beliefs, you recognise them as a barrier to your innovation and productivity. Eikris goes on to provide advice on how to overcome this self-imposition, which I would supplement with: Give it a go.

Convert your idea into action, even if it’s tiny and imperfect.

Use rubber bands and chewing gum if that’s all you have. This expression is usually used in its derogative sense – whereby something that should be solid and reliable is rather patchy and prone to break – but I mean it in its most proactive sense, whereby offering something is better than wallowing with nothing.

Professor Savaget calls it the power of a “good enough” solution. You diminish your fear of failure because it’s not meant to be the final deliverable. Instead, it’s a proof of concept that releases the pressure of hitting a home run on your first attempt by earning success in stages.

To paraphrase an expression of my own that I articulated a long time ago and has fuelled me ever since:

Don’t tell me why it won’t work. Tell me how it can.