Knowing how to learn.
Looking at outside perspectives.
We go to philosophical and thoughtful places in Episode 5 of Looking Outside with strategist Philip Ryan, Partner and Head of Innovation & Futures at Ipsos Strategy3. Today we’re looking at outside perspectives.
Philip shares how his curious mind explores varied and broad topics, which allows him to pull in vast perspectives, that lead directly to more robust strategic thinking.
Jo and Philip also discuss the benefit of pushing yourself into uncomfortable spaces and places in challenging your own personal status quo. Whether it’s exploring new cultures, learning about how big ideas shape what we think today, or questioning your own preconceptions with new nuggets of thought provoking knowledge. Yup, it can even be as simple as sitting down and having a conversation with someone who has a vastly different life journey to yours.
Fascinated with how big ideas were framed in the past, shape our present, and can influence our future, Philip also speaks on the history of ideas.
Jo’s take.
Often when we think of learning it is as a point in time - when we were in school, when we were in college - or as a means to an end - learning on the job. Learning is so often associated with an end goal in mind, as if the input of knowledge must lead to an output that’s tangible, fiscal, progressive in some way. Often what that means is that we contextualize and box-in what we learn by closing off the channels in which the information will flow out. We study what we need to in school to pass an exam. We learn what we need to in college to tick boxes for a job. We take on additional courses during work so we can progress our professional development plans. We learn about the way things are done in our business so that we can attain respect, status and freedom to keep doing that same role. On the job, we digest information about a specific topic so that we can complete a project well. At home, we learn about one part of our body so we can fix it. We tick off a task when we can answer a binary and prescriptive question (sometime, just well enough). Everything with a finite and prescriptive goal in mind.
We digest information but not knowledge. Too little time is spent in reflecting on what we learn. No time is spent in connecting what we’ve learnt to other things seemingly unrelated, gained from other courses, other reports, other roles. You can forget about taking time to think about how it relates to you on a personal level. After all what tangible benefit does that have?
Whenever I speak with Philip he brings up something new I either did not know, had on my list to learn more about, or had forgotten from philosophy classes more than decade ago. Curiosity extends beyond digging deeper into one topic you’re exploring. It’s about bringing disparate, disconnected pieces of information together and thinking about what story they might tell. It’s learning about the context of history. It’s about questioning who the ‘bad guys’ and ‘good guys’ really are. Too often we pigeonhole learning, and limit its potential to not just transform the outcomes we regardless must reach, but in the ability to transform our thinking.
Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lie our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness. This powerful statement attributed to Victor Frankl says so much not just about the ability to control reactions to our emotions, but the agility we all have to pause and consider things more critically. No matter the context … or precisely because of the context.
5 ways Philip looks at & leverages differing perspectives
1 | Learning can be a way of life.
I think we're shaped by tons of experiences beyond [our upbringing], lots. I suppose it made me less scared to try new things and to go to different places. In a vast extreme from having moved around a lot as a younger child, I went back to Ireland, went to secondary school when I was a teenager, and that was in a tiny monastery, actually run by monks. It was a 200 boys boarding school, so a very small, you would imagine parochial place. But it was a place where all the monks had lives before they joined the monastery and they had interesting stories. And they pushed us to not just learn what we needed to learn to pass exams, but learn life lessons, explore different philosophies, explore different elements of history. I think that was where I really got into this idea of not just trying new cultures but actually learning new things, trying different disciplines, etc. That led me then to college where I actually studied European studies; it was languages, politics, history. It was a poly sort of a degree that again stretched me to look at different disciplines.
2 | History can show us important parallels to today.
What I also love doing is going back, because there's a lot of things that have happened throughout history, ideas that have emerged, that right now we never think were an issue. And you don't learn about that, right? You learn printing press is great, it revolutionized Europe. You don't really read as much about all the monks and priests who said, ‘Hang on a second, writing is our domain. We don't want people to be able to read. That's not good. We need to control messages.’ So there's lots of parallels to today when you look at things like blockchain and crypto, control over what we had before and not being open to what comes next. We're always fearful of what comes next, even as we get used to what we're currently using. It seems like change is happening very slowly, but then it goes suddenly oh so quickly.
3 | But context brings a perspective of the future.
It's funny because in a lot of the Western world, we haven't had many wars, but the US has been in wars for a pretty long time, it's just that they're happening in other parts of the world, so we have less of this sort of land grab for resources. But it’s almost that the nature of war has changed. I suspect there will be more wars, but they're going to be fought so differently. So it's going to be less about tanks on the ground - and tanks themselves were a huge change from horses, right? - but you're going to have things like hacking into our infrastructure, and shutting things down that way. Think about if all the lights suddenly went out. That's the sort of thing that I think could impact people on the ground in wars of the future. We’re definitely in a world where I can see one of the established liberal democracies crashing over the next decade. I don't know which one, and there be more than one, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened, and who knows what will come out of that. It's very bleak to think of things that way, but but we should probably prepare for it.
4 | Broad sources brought together make for one powerful story.
I would say when it comes to work I like to look pretty broadly. I just enjoy the nature of learning new things and having new stories to tell. I like to mix it up: looking at which economic ideas have emerged. I read a lot of newsletter digests. I love looking at trivia like trivia digest emails. Listening to music. Watching film. Reading fiction and nonfiction. So it's looking at all of those different things that I think then helps with our work. All of those things together can play a part in helping shape ideas at work for innovation or futures.
5 | Differentiated thinking starts with a diverse knowledge bank.
Most of it is exploration. I don't think I ever consciously set out to do this, but at some point I noticed over the last I'd say 8 to 10 years, whenever I would read or listen to something, you start to think, ‘Well, what can I do with this?’ It's kind of like the way you'll hear a joke and you'll repeat the joke in your head so that you can tell somebody else about it. I started almost doing that with whatever I was reading or listening to where I would say, ‘Okay so how is this useful?’ And then as you read more you start to put this analysis together, so you're almost exploring, developing hypotheses, exploring a little bit more, proving or disproving your hypotheses, exploring a little bit more, building on your evidence … It's this constant cycle of exploration and analysis. What I would do is if that's relevant to work or to a challenge or a problem that I actually am supposed to be solving, I then like to think about it, get the story straight in my head, or try it out verbally talking about it to other people and then put pen to paper or fingers to keys.
About Philip.
Philip is a Partner in Ipsos Strategy3, Ipsos’ marketing strategy consultancy, where he leads the innovation and futures advisory business, supporting brands as as they look to envision and create the future. He brings two decades of expertise in both industry and consulting, having been an SVP at Citi and an executive at Accenture. Philip has also worked in Marketing Strategy at LG Electronics and within the Customer Care group at Waterford Crystal. His clients include American Express, The Coca-Cola Company, P&G, Cigna, Conagra, Delta, HP, Mars, Mastercard, Honda and Hilton.
Philip holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA in European Studies from Trinity College Dublin. He grew up primarily in Ireland and currently lives in Brooklyn, but bounced around, living in various cities in Europe, Asia and the US.
Connect with Philip on Linkedin or learn more about Ipsos Strategy3 https://www.ipsosstrategy3.com
