Lifelong Student-Teacher
The quintessential force multiplier
In my last post1, I introduced this Total Impact Venn diagram, and the three “how”s (Do, Teach, and Learn) that combine to capture your total impact.
Now I want to zoom in on this diagram to talk about the magic that is unlocked in the four areas carved out by the intersections of these three facets.
Do + Learn = Learn-it-all
Do + Teach = Teach-it-all
Teach + Learn = Student-teacher
Do + Learn + Teach = Lifelong student-teacher
Learn-it-all
When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he brought an intentional focus on culture. He said, “The C in CEO stands for Culture.”2 One of his earliest culture initiatives was, in his words, “We need to move from ‘know-it-alls’ to ‘learn-it-alls.’” Microsoft’s recruiting mindset had been more singularly focused on finding very smart people. That was great from a collective knowledge and know-how standpoint. But there were unintended consequences such as “loudest voice wins” and “not invented here.”3
Personalities and egos, unchecked, had more undesirable influence on direction and results. In areas of the company where such influence was highest, it evoked the know-it-all attitudes from the team. You better know what you’re talking about, or fake it if you don’t. Competence and confidence are fine, and should be encouraged. But moving beyond that, into assertiveness and overconfidence, led to bullying and shaming.
Learn-it-all was a mindset that could counter these side effects. It encouraged more humility and transparency, raising the likelihood of team members calling out where they themselves didn’t have all the answers and needed to learn more.
“Learn-it-all” was Satya’s own version of Growth Mindset, formalized by Carol Dweck in her book, Mindset.4 There was a terrific reinforcement of Growth Mindset that followed Satya’s “Learn-it-all” initiative. In the bottom corner of every whiteboard in every conference room in every Microsoft location, a small sticker was added to raise awareness5 of the benefit of bringing a Growth Mindset to the meeting.
We sure do spend lots of time in meetings. Anything from shiproom where we’re checking the status of our product’s readiness, to design meetings, to strategy meetings, to triage meetings. And in all of these settings, a Fixed Mindset can undermine the potential of that meeting. Let’s pick the most menial of the above meeting types. Does a bug triage meeting really have potential? Certainly! It has potential for being efficient in how these bugs are handled. It also has potential for better understanding the customer’s needs, and not dismissing.
Fixed Mindset: “I know what this customer is saying. It’s nothing new. But we have enough counterpoints from other customers to stay the course.”
Growth Mindset: “Interesting. This bug report is questioning our decision. And we’ve seen other similar reports. Have we missed the mark? Do we need to rethink or at least hone our decision?”
Teach-it-all
This “Learn-it-all” push was the necessary first step that opened the doors to much more investment in Microsoft’s culture. And once we had enough Learn-it-all momentum, I became an advocate for its complement, “Teach-it-all”. As Lao Tzu wrote, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” Satya’s push to be better learners had worked, so now we had to get people to be better teachers as well. Here was how I pitched this to the team.
