In late 2021, Better.com CEO Vishal Garg laid off 900 employees over a single, three-minute Zoom call. Right before the holidays. He approached the situation as a math problem- how can I cut costs as quickly as possible?
The backlash was instantaneous. High-level executives resigned in protest, the company’s reputation evaporated overnight, and Garg had to take a forced leave of absence.
Learning can be very expensive, but was Garg doomed to pay this costly tuition? There must be a better way (oh, did you see the pun?).
Learning is not cheap.
In this case, Garg paid a high price to learn a very important lesson. The sad part is, this knowledge was available at a steeply discounted price.
Most of life’s hard lessons have already been paid for by someone else. They lived it. They wrote it down. They recorded it. They passed it on. The only cost left for us is the willingness to seek it out.
What is the price that must be paid?
The False Dilemma
In my own experience as an HR professional, I saw the struggle of senior executives in their responsibility to develop employees, especially when it came to the difficult task of developing leadership competency. The tradeoff of getting something done now verses getting something better in the future is hard for our minds to accept. And, more than that, our jobs usually demand this tradeoff from us. Results are what is expected; the sooner the better.
“If I have to choose between delivering what customers need now or working on a personal development program, I am going to respond to my customers.”
This phrase is not uncommon for me to hear, because more often it is the shared experience all leaders feel. But perhaps the argument is not actually valid; perhaps it is a false dilemma.
I think that sacrificing good now will bring better later.
The Flow of Work
I once attended a two-day train-the-trainer for a personality assessment program I purchased for the company I was working for. The presenter was a PhD who developed the assessment and wrote a book about it. He was a partner in a successful company with tens of thousands of customers. This man could have hired and trained others to do what he was doing. I asked him what he got out of doing the same thing over and over again. He told me he loved the thrill of practicing, watching the reaction of the participants, then adjusting and perfecting. He found he learned much more about the product, customers’ needs, and how to improve the business by leading these sessions. He was learning in the flow of work.
Learning in the flow of work starts with the Leading Through Institute’s Deep Learning model:
Know, Feel, Do, Become
Know- a cognitive understanding of concepts and frameworks
Feel- emotional connection and personal relevance (“Can I do it” & “Is it worth it?”)
Do- behavioral practice and application in real situations.
Become- identity integration where new ways of thinking and acting become part of who you are
To grow and become, we must spend time in the “Know” step of the learning model. We must strive to learn. Read about concepts, new research, examine the experience of others, and then synthesize those ideas into our situations. We have to ponder, sit with this knowledge in our minds, teach others, hypothesize, and construct experiments. We need to make connections to other truths we have learned and decide, “Can I do it?” and “Is it worth it?”. Then we must do something, practice, reflect, and try again.
The Price for Learning
Learning takes time and effort. It is not cheap; it is a practice of sacrifice that trades something good now for something better later. But who you can become is priceless.
Of course, I am not a lone voice on this topic. Many of the most successful voices out there will tell you they spend a considerable amount of time reading, practicing, and looking for more opportunities to grow.
Going back to the CEO I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I don’t know anything about him, but I like to think he was a good man trying to do his best in a very difficult situation. We all have regrets about things we have done. Some of those decisions have led to great lessons learned. Some sad lessons, some happy lessons. I believe that the more time and effort we dedicate to the deep learning process, the happier the lessons we have. We experience the thrill of success and the joy of growth.
Learning is not cheap, but learning in the right way is worth the investment.