Unconscious Competence LO20000

Leslie Lax (leslax@cnx.net)
Wed, 25 Nov 1998 10:41:26 -0800

Replying to LO19991 --

Margaret wrote:

>This allows unconscious competence AND conscious
>learning. To me, this handles this dilemma that keeps coming up here.
>Even though we are competent, we STILL scan the environment and continue
>to LEARN.

This come very close to what my thoughts on the situation are. We (the LO
list) recently had a conversation on competence, and that the
contributions were very rich and rightly lacked consensus. I think that
competence is a continuum - we are all competent to some extent, and can
always improve our competence. Thus I would qualify Margaret's statement
by saying

"Even though we are at a [certain] level of competence, we Still scan the
environment and continue to LEARN".

I also think that this reinforces the cyclical (spiral) model suggested
where a state of unconscious competence (in the groove), allows space for
further scanning, leading to conscious incompetence (following a period of
further information gathering), leading to conscious competence (following
a period of learning), further to unconscious competence (a higher
groove). As with the move from unconscious incompetence, the cycle
requires a leap of learning - an inherent desire for situation
improvement. The impetus for this may be internal (an already
developed/developing desire for improvement), or external ("shocked" into
desire for improvement through experience).

Key to this process is the desire for situation improvement. The parallel
process of building competence and learning is unlikely to continue where
one believes that there is no room for situation improvement.

Thank you all for a very engaging conversation.

Still learning,

/Les

-- 

Leslie Lax Kelowna BC

e-mail: leslax@cnx.net web: http://members.cnx.net/leslax

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>