The Cutting Edge of Learning Transfer from 1936
Neen James caught my eye on Twitter last week posting about How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. First published in 1936, it has sold 15 million copies world-wide. The book has been sat on my shelves for years and I felt now was the time to reach for Carnegie’s masterpiece.
I love the brash, breezy writing style of the 1930s – you can just imagine Carnegie speaking to you.
Barely 20 pages in, I’m already jumping out of my seat in excitement at the parallels with learning transfer. Could Dale Carnegie be the founding father of the transfer of learning movement?!
(The honour at the moment in my mind goes to the founder of Fort Hill – the fabulous Cal Wick who started Friday5s® in 2000. The early versions of this learning transfer process evolved into ResultsEngine® in 2010. Fort Hill have had over 300,000 people use ResultsEngine/Friday5s in over 50 countries over the last 15 years, and just this month unveiled their new web app 70-20).
Carnegie’s book originates from time spent interviewing scores of successful people such as Edison and Roosevelt, to discover the techniques they used in human relations. Carnegie created a short lecture on his findings and afterwards –
“urged the listeners to go out and test it in their business and social contacts, and then come back to class and speak about their experiences and the results they had achieved. What an interesting assignment! These men and women, hungry for self-improvement, were fascinated by the idea of working in a new kind of laboratory of human relationships for adults that had ever existed” (Carnegie, 1935, page xvi)
Even in 1936 Carnegie resonated with the need to go and apply learning. He describes education as the ability to meet life’s situations.
By the time you have finished reading the first three chapters of this book – if you aren’t then a little better equipped to meet life’s situations, then I shall consider this book to be a total failure so far as you are concerned. For the ‘great aim of education’ said Herbert Spencer, ‘is not knowledge but action‘”. (Carnegie, 1935, page xix)
And who was Herbert Spencer? An English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era. How fantastic that even in the 1800s people were getting on board with learning transfer and the need for action!
What I also love is that Carnegie really understands the importance of reflection. I often talk about reflection needing to be specific, structured and accountable. He explains that that he would devote every Saturday night to reflect, or “the illuminating process of self-examination” as he phrases it.
Carnegie details that during this dedicated weekly activity, he would think through…
“…all of the interviews, discussions and meetings that had taken place during the week. I asked myself: What mistakes did I make that time? What did I do that was right – and in what way could I have improved my performance? What lessons can I learn from that experience? I often found that this weekly review made me very unhappy. I was frequently astonished at my own blunders. Of course, as the years passed, these blunders became less frequent. Sometimes I was inclined to pat myself on the back a little after one of these sessions. This system of self-analysis, self-education, continued year after year, did more for me than any other one thing I have ever attempted.” (Carnegie, 1935, pg. xxiv)
While I’m tempted to counsel him not to be so hard on himself – I love this man! Can’t wait to continue reading and see what other parallels form.