I love the idea of experimenting as a way to learn. Thanks to Leo Babauta for reminding me of this today, as I read his blog post about his year long experiments.
I’ve had a couple of big experiments myself – I moved to Australia as an experiment to live life, putting into practice what I had learnt from a weekend motivational seminar in an environment that was a blank canvas – if the tools and techniques didn’t work after a year I was just going to head home with no one else being any the wiser but with me knowing I had at least given the experiment a red hot go.
I am still here 11 years later.
Then there was the experiment that anything I was going to do in the business had to be fun – if it wasn’t fun I wasn’t going to do it. Admittedly the experiment didn’t last a full year but it was a great process – the business survived (of course!) and I discovered the more fun I had the more things that wouldn’t have normally been fun became fun.
These experiments may sound a bit out there but it was based on what I was learning at the time and purely the fact that it is an experiment gives you permission to do something that you wouldn’t normally do with an open mind and without constraints. Applying this principle to learning transfer can be a really fresh approach, especially for high performers who are reluctant to change because things are going well….. could an experiments make them even better?
My mentor Creel Price is also a big fan of experimenting in business – and I have a lot of respect for his work. He is starting the Entreprenaissance movement – check it out here.
Enjoy your own experimenting this month! I’d love to here what experiments you’ve tried or what you would like to try?
