Training Philosophy

The first principles of learning & the future skills to train in your son

4-Mile Hike

Our Tribe is meeting up monthly to be intentional with lessons we’re teaching our sons. Last week a few of us got out and hiked 4 miles with our boys to model and discuss TOUGHNESS and pushing through when things get hard.

Reach out if you’re interested in joining us in the Richmond, Va area! Our next event will be Disc Golf to practice INTEGRITY!

Moore’s Law

Technology is moving fast. A main driver for this is known as Moore’s Law.

Moore's Law is a widely-known observation made by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, in 1965. It states that:

The number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years, leading to exponential growth in computing power.

This observation has held true for several decades, driving advancements in various technological fields, including artificial intelligence (AI). As computing power increases, AI systems can handle more complex tasks, process larger datasets, and train more sophisticated models.

And AI is a big deal.

Entire industries will be upended over the next 10-20 years because of it and other technologies. This means that we should pause and reflect on what skills will be most useful in the future and how we can position our kids in the best way possible.

Adaptation Advantage

As a Learning and Development expert working for a tech consultancy, my mind often buzzes with the possibilities that fresh tech advancements can bring to our company and our talented team. We're shaking things up and entirely reimagining our whole learning system. A huge question I'm tackling is: how do I foster a learning culture that gives us a competitive advantage? In my quest for answers, I found a gem of a book, "The Adaptation Advantage," a few years back. This book has been a guiding star for me, and there are several nuggets of wisdom in it that I think are really worth sharing.

• The future of work for both individuals and organizations relies on rapid learning, unlearning, and adaptation.

• The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.

• We are moving from a world of “scalable efficiency” to a world of “scalable learning” in which we need to become more adept at working in emerging flows of knowledge rather than recycling stocks of knowledge we stored long ago.

• Conventional ideas about credentials, screening for past skills and experience, job descriptions, and even team homogeny might become a liability.

• To successfully learn and adapt, we have to be willing to let go of “the way we have always done it.” and equally, if not more difficulty, “who we think we are”.

• We need to learn how to learn and begin to not learn to work but work in order to learn.

With that said, there were some other future predictions spread throughout as to what the future skills needed were going to be:

• Individual Skills

  • Design Mindset

  • Novel and Adaptive Thinking

  • Cognitive Load Management

  • Sense-making

• Collaborative Skills

  • Social Intelligence

  • Transdisciplinary

  • Cross-Cultural Competency

  • Computational Thinking

  • New Media Literacy

  • Virtual Collaboration

• Business Skills

  • Problem-Solving

  • Leadership

  • Creativity

  • Innovation

  • Adaptability

A shift in mindset is needed regarding skills and careers. We need to have a new approach to how we are training our boys. Because the old one is not working now and it certainly will not work for the radical shift that is coming.

Closing The Gap - How Schools Fit In

Now, I am a product of the public school system. I actually loved my time there. My mother was a public school teacher her whole life and my wife taught at the same high school she and I went to. The following points do not reflect how I feel about the teachers and many of the administrators that work in the system. But, I’ll say what has to be said…

Our public school system is broken.

At best they are inefficient and for most, they are ineffective. Part of this is due to what the system was initially designed to do: create factory workers.

Based on the above points I made on the skills needed for the future, our current model does not connect with what our desired end state moving forward. Certainly not for boys. It is time for a new approach.

One that gets our kids building, solving problems, and getting them to LOVE TO LEARN.

How We Learn Best

You all know at this point that I am a huge fan of mental models. I have a few to share with you today to get you to rethink not just your schooling choices but also how YOU communicate and teach your boys. Feel free to do your own research on each but I will summarize each as shortly as possible.

1. 70/20/10: You learn by doing things and getting feedback.

2. The Learning Pyramid: Being lectured to is one of the worst ways to retain information.

3. Kirkpatrick's Model of Evaluation: Successful learning equates to behavior change and impact.

4. DSSS: Break down to first principles, select what is most important, put in logical progression, and raise the stakes.

5. Spaced Repetition - We retain more when we space out our learning over time.

6. First-Principles Thinking: Learn to think by boiling down to fundamental parts that cannot be deduced from any other assumption.

7. Feynman Technique: Learn by teaching others.

8. Pareto's Principle: The 80/20 rule.

9. 6 Sources of Influence: You often learn way more from your environment such as social and structural influences.

10. Bloom’s Taxonomy: Remembering facts is only the beginning, there are 5 other stages to mastery.

Do you know what's surprising? Almost none of our current systems follow these principles. In fact, they're pretty much doing the exact opposite. And unfortunately, most of how we parent and teach our children is too.

Takeaways

So, Moms and Dads, there are two primary questions raised in this article:

1. What should you be training your son to do?

2. How should you be training him?

What:

Start with the end in mind. We want our boys to become competent men with Christ-like character. This kind of character can only really happen with a deep relationship with Christ. So, start there. How are you being intentional about discipling your son in that way? Check out our ADKR model from a few weeks back if you want some more advice on what to focus on.

Then, think about what the skills of the future are going to be? There is A LOT that is going to happen in the next 10-20 years. Let alone 50. How are we training our boys to be the most valuable members of society? The few big ones to focus on are: Problem-Solving, Leadership, Collaboration, and Digital Literacy.

How:

Your goal should be to put them in an active state of learning as often as possible. Jordan Peterson’s rule is to do the minimum necessary. Expect much from your children. They are capable of more than you can imagine. Less lecture and more environmental design. Less memorization and more building, problem-solving, and games. Do things. Don’t just preach them. And for the few things that are important - emphasize them by consistently repeating them day after day.

Remember that you are the steward and they are the Lord’s!

Train. Disciple. Encourage.