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13.05.05

A reflective mindset

Joseph Weizenbaum in derStandard about the Internet:’Das Ganze ist ein riesiger Misthaufen, der Perlen enthält. Aber um Perlen zu finden, muss man die richtigen Fragen stellen. Gerade das können die meisten Menschen nicht.’

This seemingly obvious description about the value and importance of reflection in not at all trivial. In my own experience, there are very few individuals who take time and reflect about their activities, professional life, and interests. Usually, in a professional environment, both managers and employees are not educated to allow for reflection. Instead, they are pushed from one obligation to the next, focusing on delivery time rather than content. It is indeed abashing to see that the most reflective element in a daily corporate life is a project filing at the end of a project. Even this is not a standard routine for most organisations, since the next project already waiting. The Japanese approach a project delivery very differently, there is a ceremony-like project finish phase with time provided to archive the project files, write about the most imporatant aspects (project results, lessons learnt etc) in order to allow a deeper understanding and learning of the involved individuals. In this context, it is almost unthinkable not to mention Kolb’s learning cycle, explaining the importance of this reflective learning:

Refering back to Weizenbaum, I agree that the Internet (most prominently via Google) misleads to confusing information with knowledge. I experience an increasing number of people sitting in front of computers and surfing the Internet, thereby assured to learn and become knowledgable. However, this is not the case. Rather spend one hour less in front of the Internet and discuss a topic with a friend or take a walk and think about the issue. This is not effortless (it makes a big difference if you ’just’ think about something or if you also write it down). It needs to be trained (allow at least half an hour every day to sit back and reflect about what happened during that day). But it pays back, since this is the only way to generate in-depth knowledge.

Since a few years, MBA-programs have been criticised on several fronts. Most prominently, Henry Mintzberg (from McGil University) is one of the them, arguing that you cannot create leaders in classrooms. There are only few MBA-courses that reacted to this allegation, I think - since I am a MBA-student there and thus know how they changed their approach - the Open University Business School is one of them advocating a reflective and cyclic teaching methodology. Mintzberg and colleagues created their own non-MBA education, the International Master’s Program in Practising Management, where the emphasis is on reflecting (through so-called ’reflection papers’) on the lessons-learnt at the different workshops.

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