What Motivates Lifelong Learners

Research found that passion is a very powerful motivator for learning rather than fear.

The passion of the explorer has three elements:

• Explorers have a long-term commitment to excel in a specific domain that excites them.
• They are excited even when they face unexpected challenges. They see these problems as opportunities to learn.
• When faced with new challenges, explorers long to connect with others who can help them get better answers quickly.

Only 14% of US workers are passionate about learning that relates to their work. However, we all have the potential for this form of passion.

Young children have all the elements required: curiosity, imagination, creativity, and a willingness to take risks and connect with others. But adults have been discouraged from pursuing this kind of learning because traditional institutions require them to be cogs in a machine, following the process manual to the letter without deviation.

In a rapidly changing world, scalable efficiency is becoming increasingly inefficient. It is essential to move from scalable efficiency to scalable learning, where the focus turns from doing routine tasks to helping everyone learn faster.

To do this, we need to redesign our business practices to encourage the passion of the explorer in all our workers. One way is to identify a part of the business with performance issues and encourage employees to address the novel problems.