Humans are awesome learning machines, when we get out of our own way

A variety of obstacles and a group of humans, working together will likely make the situation better.

Any practice, framework, tool we use and the things we make with those tools all need to be guided by groups of people caring about people. I think of teams of people sometimes as learning machines and was going through some notes, playing with words and realized if I flip those words around I had a hey-wait-a-minute moment. Learning machine becomes Machine Learning! I wrote the following to explore that feeling.

Humans are better learning machines than any machine learning tool.

Get a group of people who are willing and able through skill and context to find and solve problems and you can solve most things. I believe this and have seen it happen both in my own experience and through others stories.

The process can look messy. It can feel impossible. Any one of those pieces can be missing: will, skill, or context.

If we do have those pieces and if we are rigorous enough in our individual and collective work habits, choose the right problems, are in a supportive situation to keep the work going, if we reward learning and adapt to include what we learn, I'm certain there's nothing that can stop a caring group of humans to make their best anything. It could be any kind of art, science, engineering, I know we can do the work to figure things out and make anything we put our minds to.

Machines alone are nowhere near up to the task. Part of choosing and adapting means we pick and make tools along the way and that's where machines can fit in.

Not to brag us up too much because [awkward pause, gestures around internet].

Let's be humble about this. We are also really good at avoiding learning.

Belonging and safety are part of our approach to seeing what's important in the world. It's not just a switch each of us can flip to feel a certain way. What needs and risks are we facing, how do we feel about them and then how does the group we identify with belonging feel about them. All of that influences our individual choices.

Individual smarty-pants-creativity and problem solving can get work started, but even then none of us exist alone on a timeline floating in space. Did the individual really do it all alone? Before the ideas come, before the clever work session began we are connected to and affected by all kinds of people.

We need groups of people to do our best learning. And the best learning we can do will be influenced by the groups of people we're part of.

Sometimes humans are inefficient learning machines. If this were a post about machine learning vs human learning here's where I would make a case for the conflict and why humans should be the winner. Machine Learning and related approaches to problem discovering and solving are fine tools for the right problems. That's not where I see the conflict with teams learning.

My concern is when organizations avoid including humans and setting up groups to learn. The problem I see is when a business avoids setting up teams to be learning machines that are meant to affect the course of business.

Learning machines are a proxy for other things.

I'm pro-human. There, it's on the page, I said it. That includes all kinds of other things like caring about our individual and collective well being.

Also I'm pro-technology. I see tech as an expression of our humanity, a tool we can use to solve problems we care about.

Working with technology as a designer, engineer, and leader has felt both great and awful. When I've worked in places with cultures that value inclusion and learning, that's where I feel great. The tougher places to be is where they do one or more of these things:

• Extreme hierarchical decision making. People value above all else the feelings of those above them in the organization chart.
• Exclude audiences. Avoid learning from and with the people served and affected by what the organization makes.
• Extract value with no limit. Success is defined fully by financial outcomes.

All three are ways to avoid learning and to exclude others from decisions. To create for business where a business has no limits on how it's willing to gather value for its own benefit, that's a kind of severe extractive underlying set of beliefs and behaviors. An almost unsaid almost invisible binding culture. For anyone looking looking to include your audience in decisions it becomes a barrier impossible to avoid noticing.

We can get out of our own way.

Teams and organizations can change. If you take the list of problems and turn it into principled solutions that's a place to start.

From this problem	To this principle
Extreme hierarchical decision making.	Leaders and teams learn from one another to continuously improve the work and the organization.
Exclude audiences.	Include audiences to make credible caring decisions both with them on on their behalf.
Extract value with no limit.	Value and reward how profits are earned and other meaningful outcomes in addition to financial earning.

What matters most is learning, including, adapting. If you see those same problems, what principles would you choose or change? Which is most important do you think?