Intentional learning is about getting more out of the moments of our day.
Every project, every meeting, every conversation becomes an opportunity to learn and grow. While intentional learning can be spontaneous, it’s also deliberate.
In this Blog, I share an effective strategy to continually learn, grow, and achieve development goals.
What drives most of us to learn something new is curiosity and a desire to keep growing. Turning that desire into new capabilities, though, requires a plan. McKinsey’s research about our intentional learning shows that it’s essential to cultivate both the right mindset and the right skills to keep learning throughout our personal and professional lives. Setting small, clear development goals is one of the five core practices of effective learners and serves as an anchor point for seeking out and benefitting from new learning opportunities.
Learning can be honed through practice
People wonder though how to best put that advice into practice. Too often, the goals that are set become goals unmet.
McKinsey’s designed a very effective strategy for achieving learning goals which incorporates three key elements:
It represents a simple heuristic—“3x3x3”—as a memorable baseline method for designing professional development goals in a way that aligns with the practices of effective learning. I’ve used this method myself – and its working perfectly for me😊!
3x3x3 encourages you to define three development goals, over a three-month period, engaging three other people to support you in those goals and hold you accountable. It’s a framework that is used in varying forms to help ourselves put intentional learning into practice. Here are the most relevant details:
Setting three development goals
It's recommended to focuses on no more than three at any given time as anything more is likely to be counterproductive – division of focus, energy, and practice among too many pursuits.
Three months
The 2nd “3” refers to the length of time you should set to achieve development goals. It is about building a plan and process for achieving the goal you’ve set – a three-month period forces you to be concrete and specific in your goals, which decades of goal-setting research show is critical to goal attainment. Be mindful about that the optimal duration though as this may vary somewhat, depending on the nature of the goal.
Three other people
The final “3” refers to the people who will help you work on your development goals. There is a natural instinct to keep our goals to ourselves. It protects us from embarrassment if we don’t achieve those goals and enables us to feel less vulnerable.
The most effective learners know what they want to learn and why. They seek out opportunities to engage and have a bias for action. While they may be curious about a lot of things, they know how to focus their learning to get specific things done.
Building a new capability and or habit is rewarding and has immediate impact, every day.
If you need help to get On the Path😊, just reach out to me.