Knowledge = experience × reflection 2

Managing Master Charles Handi once taught at the London Business School. When training some managers, he said: "You will not regard this training as an unforgettable learning opportunity unless it helps you to reflect on the past and understand your past experiences. If this can be achieved, it can help you better solve future problems ."
　　


Handi's passage contains three important formulas. The most important thing is first: Experience + reflection = knowledge. Experience itself is not knowledge, and knowledge is formed only after reflection. After five or ten years of management, you are proud to think that you have five or ten years of management experience, it has been repeated five or ten times.


As the saying goes: Eat a grain, grow a wisdom. In fact, after a meal, if you do not reflect on it, you will not become wise. People who are not good at reflection are not wise enough to eat ten grays. People who are good at reflection will be able to grow smart when they see others eat.


The second formula is: Experience + Difficulty = difficulty. Experience without knowledge formation is the experience of eating a grain without wisdom, or the experience of a blind cat encountering a dead mouse. With such experience, if the problem persists.


The third formula is knowledge + Difficulty = solution. Knowledge can help solve new problems, which is the core difference between it and experience. The systems, processes, procedures, rules, and methods Extracted from experience are knowledge. Even intuition that appears to come from experience is also a form of knowledge.


James march and Albert Simon, two academic masters in the organizational field, gave an intuitive example: a super chess master, able to compete with 50 or more masters at the same time. He took several rounds before every game. He only had a few seconds to take each game. Instead of thinking accurately, he relied on intuition, but he could win almost all the games.


Why? The study found that a super master can be familiar with the 50,000 pawns configuration mode and know how to act in this mode. Therefore, in a few seconds, the super master depends on the recognition mode to choose the corresponding action. Ma Qi and Simon said: "intuition is just a skill to recognize things familiar with past experiences ."


Reflecting on experiences and summing up patterns. When encountering new difficulties, we can quickly identify the patterns and take corresponding actions. This is intuition. Einstein also said: "intuition is just the product of previous knowledge-based experience ." The so-called knowledge-based experience forms the knowledge experience through reflection.


Each time at the beginning of the "fruitful self-management" workshop, I will share the story of handi to help students understand: whether it is Handi training or my workshop, it only provides a reflection environment. Among them, the teacher's explanation, discussion, interaction between teachers and students, Case thinking, and so on are only the catalyst for reflection. The final result is whether the trainees have reflected on their experiences.


You can create a reflection environment on your own. Kasparov, the king of chess, gave his life advice by reflecting at the end of every day, "Recognizing patterns in life" and asking himself: "What do we see? What have you learned? Have you observed or experienced what should be recorded? Have we identified this situation, opportunity, or pattern? Will it happen or appear again ?"


The power of reflection is enormous. The famous Einstein Formula E = mc can be applied.^{2. Change the first formula to: Knowledge = experience × reflection2. This is more accurate in mathematics: When reflection is equal to zero, knowledge is equal to zero even if there is more experience. This can also lead to a very relevant association: a strong reflection, able to extract amazing knowledge from limited experience, just like releasing atomic energy from a small uranium atom.}

For more information, see personal website http://www.liulan.info

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