Structured Learning vs. Unstructured Learning

One of the key skills of every knowledge worker is the ability to learn new material and apply it in the real world. And because the world is changing so fast, the speed at which you learn becomes a distinct competitive advantage.

Now I am of the school that knowledge has no inherent value. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake leaves me unsatisfied. I want to apply what I have studied. Unless we talk about entertainment, like reading a book about the fall of the Roman empire. But for the sake of this essay, we focus on "professional learning" in order to advance your career.

Houston, we need a process

In tech and marketing specifically we love to read about tactics, hacks and best practices. It's immediate knowledge that can be directly applied and experimented with. BUT, if we only focus on copying what others are doing, our professional growth is heavily limited.

Every now and then we are plateauing with our knowledge of the fundamentals. When you start out in marketing for example, you'll be really ineffective if you do not know the basics of market research, segmentation, targeting, positioning, the 4 Ps, etc. Likewise, when you specialize in content marketing later on, you will need the fundamentals of writing a good story, keyword research, content distribution, how to measure content success and so forth.

You need to learn the concepts, the building blocks and the processes of a new discipline first before you dig into the juicy tactics. So there are really two phases of learning something new:

1. Structured learning
2. Unstructured, or "self-advancing" learning

So let's have a look at each.

Structured Learning

In my definition structured learning is to be applied when you need to grasp the fundamentals first. There needs to be some kind of tried-and-true curriculum. Somebody who distilled the basic concepts for you to get started. This is where you cannot advance on your own through trial and error or googling for solutions. Because you don't know what to google.

Think of programming for example. If you don't know the basic structure of Javascript let's say, it is near impossible for you to make any progress, let alone write your own web application. And so even if you self-educate online, you still need somebody who has done the work and put together a sequential learning curriculum you can follow to learn the ropes.

In programming this might be self-evident, but think about all the other knowledge-working professions and how little structured learning there is.

Unstructured Learning

Now contrast this to unstructured learning, where you can grow organically by responding to obstacles in your path by either experimenting or googling best practices. This is the brute-force method. You have a problem; you google it, try stuff out and solve it on the fly.

This mode is fantastic if we can ask the right questions and know what a sensible solution would look like when we encounter it.

I would argue, that most of us knowledge workers got accustomed to this self-advancing style of learning. The competitive environment of business forces us to act quickly and figure stuff quickly.

But in the long-run hacks, tactics and best practices can only get us so far.

My Observations & Approach

Of what I have seen this lack of structured learning is the status quo in marketing today.

Everybody thinks they know how to market, without having ever studied the fundamentals. And in the beginning of my career I fell into this trap as well. Until I realized I am spending hours googling solutions and copying other people's "best practices" and having nothing to show for it.

So my current thinking on this is two-fold:

1. Let's keep studying the fundamentals of our fields. Let's train ourselves in the meta-skills that make us effective in our jobs. Structured, curriculum based courses are best suited for this.
2. When researching best practices let's not blindly copy the tactics, but use them to better understand the problem we are facing and improve the underlying processes of our work.

So in other words: Unstructured learning and best-practices should drive our process, not the outcome. When looking at what others have done successfully before you, focus on the way they thought about the problem, not on the solution.

I believe that if we use this two-pronged approach to learning and improving our skills than we are well prepared for anything future will throw at us.