Overheard on the tube

There is no quiet like the quiet of a London Underground carriage during rush hour.

What is your organisation doing to make sure that ‘demoralising’ is not what the learning curve feels like?

Nobody speaks. People are packed in like sardines (like lockdown never happened) and the quiet is the envy of many a yoga retreat. If anyone breaks the vow of silence at all, they are probably tourists or that rare thing: people commuting in groups. And if they speak, they sort of know that what they say is now for the entire carriage to hear.

I don’t make the rules.

Some of the things I have overheard on the tube on those rare occasions when people speak have been hilarious. Like once I heard two girls chatting during the height of the Afghanistan war and one was filling the other in on what sounded like a dating update. “It’s not that he’s stupid,” she said to her friend of her date. “It’s something different and yet infinitely worse: I am not sure he cares to know where Afghanistan is.”

Savage.

But in an instant, I knew what she was talking about. I know people like that. I have worked with quite a few of them over the years.

People who don’t know a thing (which in itself isn’t a problem) but also have no interest in learning it.

I was reminded of this incident last week, as I stood uncomfortably close to a group of strangers on another train at rush hour. The strangers were young. Like super young. The sort of young that makes me feel like if they are not still at school then I am a lot older than I feel. And they were talking about work.

They were talking about a person they all seemed to work for. And one of the lads said something that stopped me in my tracks.

“This learning on the job thing,” he said, “It sounds great in principle, but since there is nowhere to learn and nobody to learn from, I literally can only learn from my mistakes.

“And I make mistakes not knowing they are mistakes. Because nobody taught me. I make mistakes I have no way of knowing are mistakes. Until I make them.

“And I am told that was a mistake and I learn. And nobody is telling me off. But it is so demoralising. I guess I will know for next time.”

So here we are. Someone who really wants to know where Afghanistan is, so to speak. But for some reason, we are not telling them. We are asking them to keep guessing till they get it right.

No, that’s Switzerland. Keep going.

Nope, that’s Bolivia, go again.

Now, you will probably say that I am going for the cheap jibes here. I don’t know what those lads did for a living and I have no way of knowing whether learning on the job is literally the only way to do whatever they were doing.

Perhaps.

Possible.

But unlikely.

There is literally nothing you can’t explain in advance of a mistake happening either in the form of tuition, observation, apprenticeship, internship or a YouTube tutorial.

But the reality is, as most office work has stayed in a post-Covid hybrid shape, we have given shockingly little thought to what replaces the immersive learning we all did in the workplace when we were young.

Observation is a mighty tool.

Overhearing and being exposed to behaviours, practices and habits is a mighty school.

I was already 20 years in the workforce when we went into lockdown. I had already absorbed 20 years of observations on top of structured and unstructured learning.

And I still made mistakes.

What of those who were on their first job?

How much did we teach? How much did we give them to hang onto? How much have we thought about how to replace what they no longer have other than correcting their mistakes when they make them?

Before you ask… no. I didn’t turn around to have a conversation with the lad. I will not break the code of the London Underground. Nobody speaks to strangers. I don’t make the rules.

But if I had been willing to break the rules, I would have said to him two things.

First of all, his choice of words… ‘it’s demoralising, but I now know for next time’ is an extremely positive way of looking at it. And that positivity is a choice.

The sentence also works the other way round: I guess I now know for the next time, but it is demoralising.

The emphasis matters.

But what matters most is that this young lad who sounded like he genuinely wanted to learn and do well was demoralised enough to tell his friends on the tube on the way home. That was the epigram of his day and a recurring experience in the workplace: the only way available for me to learn is through making mistakes I didn’t know were mistakes.

Is this really where the sum total of thousands of years of civilisation has got us?

We surely have worked out how to pass on life skills and knowledge and wisdom without saying to our trainees: “Tell you what… I will only teach you about fire safety once you’ve set the curtains on fire. I will only teach you to swim once you’ve drowned.”

The world is moving fast, and we are all responsible for our own learning curves. I am not for a moment suggesting we should take everyone by the hand every step of the way.

But getting things wrong can’t be the only way the future of our workforce learns the things we collectively already know and need them to also know to do the jobs we have hired them to do.

So.

What is your organisation doing for the people entering the workforce now? Whose challenges aren’t what our challenges were. Who may need all there is to know about Chat GPT but still need to learn a craft and the unspoken rules of how each industry operates and what managing your career looks like.

What is your organisation doing to make sure that ‘demoralising’ is not what the learning curve feels like?

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. The kids are alright.

But are we?

Are we showing up to teach them what they need to know in a way that feels like a learning curve, not a booby trap?

Because honestly, if the definition of someone who doesn’t care to know something important is not exactly stupid but something different and yet infinitely worse, then what is the word for someone who does know but makes it hard for others to get to the same knowledge?

#LedaWrites

Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.

She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem. 

Leda is also a published author – her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is available to order here.

All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!

Follow Leda on X @LedaGlyptis and LinkedIn.