Education is most valuable when it teaches you how to learn and how to think
Last week I had a wonderful “Kilkenomics alumni) catch up over a pint of Guinness (of course!) with a “regular” from my favourite annual event who, in their “day job”, is a professor of Economics.
I mentioned to them that my youngest son intends to study Economics at University, is currently getting his online UK universities application ready, and had just shared with me his draft “Personal Statement”, that begins with the line: “who pays for the street lights in Cayman?”. In his personal statement, he went on to explain that this question occurred to him as a young teenager given he knew Cayman has no income or corporate tax and lead him to study the combination of Economics and Maths at “A” level in preparation for further study at University.
This excited the Professor of Economics, who said: “well, I’d love to have someone with that ability to think and be curious at my University”.
They then went on to talk about a case study he gives undergraduates. He first gives them a well thought out and reviewed paper with multiple ways to measure quality, then asks the students to explain how they would determine the quality of a particular business providing on-demand consumer goods (I’m being vague, as that way they can keep using the case study!).
Without giving too much away, one way to get no better than a C or B in that assignment is if all you do is apply the quality measurements in the paper alone. What they LOVE to see is where people take a step back from the question and ask the right sorts of questions, being those that are more “upstream”, more “at source”, eg the types of activities, behaviours, processes that may then result in higher quality outputs.
In short, the professor is more interested in how the students think than the answer they come up with.
This also reminds me of one of my older children, who had an admissions interview (again for Economics, what can I say?!) at an esteemed institution. In the interview with multiple professors, they were presented with a problem. They immediately responded: “I haven’t been taught how to solve this”, to which the professors responded “We know. We are not testing your knowledge of Economics here, we are testing your ability to think like an economist”. After the interview, my son was inspired and energised by the challenge, one that gave him momentum for his university education for years to come.
So, I too believe that what the world needs is people who can learn how to think, not those who memorise knowledge to apply (the latter is increasingly being done by computers and then AI).
What about the term “Thinking outside the box” though?
Value those who can think outside the box
The case study given by that Professor of Economics in London is, to some extent, a trick question. It gives an accepted framework to assess outcomes in a certain area, then asks the students how they would know if a business did well by that measure.
The “box” they are given is the box of the outcome measures, but the Professor will only give an “A” to those who can think “outside the box”, to those who can look to the heart of solving the problem, to what is “at source”, what, if done well, will create those measurable outcomes.
Now, please look at the “nine boxes” problem. Without googling it, please solve it. My only clue to you is that you must “think outside the box”.
When you’ve got it, you have thought outside the box. Was it easy? hard? You can practice, you can learn to think outside the box, to connect the dots in ways others would not have thought possible.
When people ask me what I do as a profession, this is similar. I listen deeply to my clients, then I help them find the right answer for them. As part of this process, often I “connect the dots”, I think outside their particular box for them, then encourage them to do the same. Sometimes connecting the dots is connecting them to other people they might not have thought of, sometimes other ideas, businesses, innovations.
Perhaps I’ve naturally been good at thinking outside the box (and yes, my clients value it, it is a valued skill), but at the same time I have spent decades honing the skills and knowledge necessary to do so.
Curious to learn more? book a video call with me in moments on my site here, let’s connect some dots together 🙂