Yesterday I was fortunate enough to get to spend about three hours with Clayton Christensen. Clay, currently a professor at Harvard Business School, is best known for his book, The Innovator’s Dilemma. His latest book, How Will You Measure Your Life, has some wonderfully insightful business and life lessons.
His books, thinking, and approach to life, business, — and now, teaching — have influenced me greatly. I recommend reading everything he’s written and watching any videos of him you can find. Clay’s site is a good place to start.
What impressed me most about Clay yesterday was his clarity. He’s a very clear thinker and communicator. His genuine interest for helping other people discover clarity comes through with every patient word.
One thing he said
Spending time with Clay leads to lots of interesting insights, but for me, there was one that stood out among all the others.
You’ve probably heard it said that someone can’t be taught until they’re ready to learn. I’ve heard it said that way too. It makes sense, and my experience tells me it’s mostly true. Why though? Why can’t someone be taught until they’re ready to learn?
Clay explained it in a way that I’ve never heard before and I’ll never forget again. Paraphrased slightly, he said: “Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question – you have to want to know – in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.”
What an insight. He continued to talk about the power of questions. Questions are your mind’s receptors for answers. If you aren’t curious enough to want to know why, to want to ask questions, then you’re not making the room in your mind for answers. If you stop asking questions, your mind can’t grow.
I’ll never think about learning — and teaching — the same way again. Thank you Clay.
Related life-changing insight: Give it five minutes.
Kris Gösser
on 02 Aug 121) Love the meta title
2) I got his latest book. It’s worth the investment; I enjoyed it.
Pete Abilla
on 02 Aug 12Clay Christensen is an inspiration to many, to be sure.
Looking back in the history of ideas, Clay’s comment finds its roots in the Pragmatism of William James (who has inspired many Mormons – Clay is also a very devout Mormon, by the way). From William James, speaking of Ideas,
So, True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot.
Oh, by the way, Clayton Christensen, cited me in his book, The Innovator’s Dilemma – in his explanation on the 5 Whys. Kinda fun.
Aditya Rustgi
on 02 Aug 12Great Post. I like the ‘placement metaphor’ used here.
THis is why Socratic methods of education are vastly superior to the pedantic methods. THey make you focus on asking the right questions. That is more important than the answers themselves, sometimes.
Jeremy
on 02 Aug 12No offence but this “insight” strikes me as specious. I often get fantastic ideas in a flash of insight that are question and answer in one.
Trisha Liu
on 02 Aug 12“Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off.” Omigosh, this is gorgeous and brilliant. Thank you so much for sharing it!
Iarfhlaith
on 02 Aug 12That concept fits nicely into the 4 different levels that everyone goes through whilst learning something new:
- Unconscious incompetence (they don’t know what they don’t know) - Conscious incompetence (they know what they don’t know) - Conscious competence (they know it, but they have to think really hard about the answer) - Unconscious competence (they k ow it so well that the answer comes instinctively to them)
When Clay refers to the question creating the space in the mind for the answer to go, it’s another way of explaining the conscious incompetence element of the journey of learning. We have to understand the problem before the answer can make sense.
David Cohen
on 02 Aug 12Among the many phenomenal posts I’ve read on the 37signals blog, this is my favorite. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Another thing I really appreciate about Clay is how he’s encouraging people to really spend the time and energy to understand their unique life purpose. Some people may think the ‘life purpose’ concept is hokey, but it correlates well with the ‘do what you love’ concept.
Alek
on 03 Aug 12That’s such a great way to put it and perhaps the reason so many inspiring people seem to be so curious.
Anthony
on 03 Aug 12@Jeremy (02 Aug 12). This quote refers to the process of teaching others, not self realised insights. So indeed you may have great ideas that pop into your head. But trying to teach that idea to someone else is the context of this post.
el
on 03 Aug 12Nothing new… as other people already mentioned, Socrates talked about it two thousand years ago.
Search for “Socratic method”.
Anon
on 03 Aug 12@el, very true, you know what they say, it’s not the people prospecting for gold that get rich it’s the people selling the tools to them.
Dan
on 03 Aug 12This is a wonderful statement on how questions help you think and process information. We’ve been working for two decades on how to teach all people, no matter their level of literacy, to ask their own questions. Steve Quatrano, a board member, has described the process of the Question Formulation Technique as “a way to organize your thinking about something you do not know.” There’s more info at www.rightquestion.org. And, by the way, Socrates got the importance of questions two millenia ago, but, for too many years, all who followed him fell into a pattern of the wise asking questions of the less wise while not focusing on how to teach students to ask their own questions
Hique
on 03 Aug 12Its interesting that this post itself is an answer and will hit just those who are ready.
Simon
on 03 Aug 12Wow, deep insight. Thanks for sharing this!
Ava
on 03 Aug 12That is a useful insight. Thanks for sharing it.
Aristotle Pagaltzis
on 05 Aug 12Sure.
“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”
—Pablo Picasso
Cam Collins
on 06 Aug 12The image of finding space in your one’s (expansion) to fit the answer to a new question is a great concept. Why is it that the older we get the less malleable that space becomes? That’s a mindset we need to reverse.
I’ve never quoted scripture in my life, but I ran across something that dovetails directly into the “Give it 5 minutes” post that I thought was worth sharing:
”...be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.” James 1:19
Cam Collins
on 06 Aug 12TYPO: “The image of finding space in your mind ...”
Jude Boudreaux
on 07 Aug 12Thanks so much for posting this! My wife and I have been having a lot of conversations around this very topic, and the book will be here in two days. Can’t wait to read it.
David
on 07 Aug 12That would be a form of what’s classically called Socratic questioning. A very useful method of learning. Clay might be a classically trained teacher. Great stuff!
Junjay
on 07 Aug 12I agree-before we can learn something we have to want to learn, and that involves having questions in our mind we’re trying to answer, the most basic ones being, “How do I improve? What do I need to learn to get better?” I think it’s a great way to go through life as well-instead of viewing life as goals or checklists to finish, view them as questions to answer, which then bring forth more questions.
Anthony Barone
on 07 Aug 12Hey Jason… Clayton was recently in upstate NY to attend the Hill Cumorah Pageant. I’m not Morman but idolize Clayton Christensen. I dragged my wife to hear him speak about his new book and meet him in person. She thought I was crazy but ended up enjoying his talk : ). After the event, I was able to speak with him ( http://instagram.com/p/NFrChzozby ). I asked if he ever heard of Ruby on Rails since I believe it was a perfect example of a foothold market for his innovator’s dilemma theory. He said he didn’t but sounds like he should. I have to ask the reason you spent time with him. Did you approach him or did he approach you? Thanks for sharing your experience. He is certainly a special guy.
Luciano
on 09 Aug 12If you want to know in dept about how your consciousness is a fractal shape and how it grows by holding pointers to information (because information is everywhere – look up “Bell’s Theorem”) and functions, I STRONGLY recommend the awesome book “I am a strange Loop”, by Douglas Hofstader
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