Today I heard a speech that neatly dovetailed with the concept of "apprentice mind" that I was posting about before CPSI started. Another CPSI keynote speech -- Mike Morrison, dean of the University of Toyota, spoke on "Playing The Inner Game of Leadership."

Morrison said that "our need to know is life's irrepressible force," and that "learning is the critical response to the need to know." Essentially, his conclusion was that learning is a way of being, not something we do. And "learning as a way of being [is a result of] changes we make to ourselves and the world in response to our need to know." He described this learning as a way of being as "systems thinking," the ability to see the whole problem.

Bringing this back around to apprentice mind, Morrison said that learning opportunities should be embedded -- "you catch people raising their hand and give them a just-in-time learning resource," moving away from the classroom experiences to real learning experiences on the job.

And on another subject -- it was pretty cool to hear the dean of the University of Toyota talk about "just in time learning" when Toyota was the company that pioneered just-in-time production.