Accelerating Learning: A Leader’s Guide
We all wish we could learn new skills faster. As leaders, we often wish we could accelerate the learning of our teams. While there’s no true shortcut to the long-term accumulation of knowledge and skills, we can learn how to learn more effectively, and some methods clearly work better than others.
Someone recently asked me why engineers should earn more than teachers. My reply: the two aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, any great engineering manager is also a great teacher. A manager’s impact is only as strong as their ability to teach their team.
And here’s a key insight: the best learners don’t wait to be taught. Most learning is self-directed. The better we get at teaching ourselves, the faster and deeper we learn.
A manager’s impact is measured by their ability to teach their team.
An old proverb captures this beautifully: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” Medical schools often apply this through a method called SODOTO—See One, Do One, Teach One. Applied thoughtfully, it’s not just a technique for learning a concept, it’s a framework for accelerating mastery.
See One: Observe and Absorb
The first step is observation.
Watch an expert, study the prevailing theory, or hear a story of what worked. Humans have passed along wisdom through stories for generations. Stories create powerful connections, allowing us to learn vicariously, seeing both successes and failures.
Observation is powerful for understanding what to do, but to go beyond the status quo, we need to understand how and why methods were developed. Anyone who studies the history of a topic gains a clear advantage.
Consider these examples:
Napoleon mastered warfare by studying history. Patton later expanded on that knowledge.
The Wright Brothers studied centuries of flight before attempting heavier-than-air human flight.
Jeffrey Katzenberg revived Disney by immersing himself in Walt Disney’s archives, applying those lessons to films like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King.
Barry Diller spent three years studying the history of Hollywood at William Morris Agency, giving him an edge over peers his age.
When I transitioned from financial services to manufacturing, I decided to study the history of quality. That’s how I discovered Walter Shewhart, W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, and Taichi Ohno. These are the leaders behind the 20th-century quality revolution. I thought I was learning about quality. I ended up learning about management.
I read business biographies, listen to podcasts, watch documentaries, and study business theory to give context to all the stories I absorb. Stories help me filter out bad advice and provide compelling examples when teaching my team.
Tip: Take notes by hand whenever possible. Writing by hand strengthens your connection to the material and helps you absorb and remember it.
For me, a physical notebook works far better than electronic notes. History’s greats, Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Walter Chrysler, relied on notebooks. I’ve been keeping one since I was twelve, inspired by a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, who carried a notebook in his pocket. It’s been invaluable ever since.
Do One: Practice and Experiment
Observation teaches us what to do. Doing teaches us how it feels, and that makes all the difference.
Management, negotiation, and leadership skills cannot be learned from books alone. We must experience the challenges, emotions, and distractions that come with practice.
One of the most valuable aspects of doing is learning to handle pressure. Olympic athletes spend years preparing for moments that last minutes. Some thrive, some crumble. Observing their resilience reminds us to embrace pressure in our own growth.
Doing is also about experimentation. Reading about a technique is not enough.
You must try it, feel it, adjust it, and get feedback. As a runner, I read about techniques but only truly learned them by practicing. The body teaches what theory cannot. Similarly, in management, you only internalize microskills by experiencing them in real situations.
Doing is about experimentation, feeling, and adjusting—learning in real time.
Teach One: Solidify Mastery
Teaching is where learning truly crystallizes.
I discovered this the hard way at twenty. Broke, living in New York City with $50 to my name, I had no job and no clear path. A friend told me about a teaching position at a private high school: Algebra, Geometry, Earth Science, Biology, and Physics. I had no credentials, no prior teaching experience, and barely knew the subjects.
A million reasons told me I couldn’t do it: no license, no degree, no experience. But desperation—and hunger—pushed me to interview. I was honest about my limitations and somehow got the job.
The first days were trial by fire. The students were rowdy, the energy was high, and I had to learn on the fly. One day, they asked me what pH stood for—I had to look it up in the book, which earned a call from the principal. Each night, I studied for the next day.
About a month in, something remarkable happened. The gap between learning a topic and teaching it collapsed. I could read something new and immediately feel ready to teach it.
Here’s the technique I developed:
Read once to absorb the concept as if it were someone else’s words.
Read again, making it your own, as though you were teaching it.
This is a variation on an acting technique taught by Alan Arkin: first, read openly; then make it your own. I still use this method to internalize new ideas quickly.
Tip: Teaching accelerates learning. When you teach, you solidify knowledge and identify gaps you might otherwise miss.
The Bigger Picture
Learning and teaching are inseparable. If we are learning, we are also teaching, ourselves and others.
We owe much of what we know to those who came before us. Our responsibility is to learn, improve, and pass along knowledge for the next generation.
By accelerating our own learning, and helping the next generation do the same, we accelerate collective learning. This is how leaders, teams, and organizations gain lasting advantage.
Our responsibility is to learn from history, improve upon it, and pass it along to the next generation.
The cycle is simple yet profound: Observe, Do, Teach. Repeat.
The faster we move through this cycle, the more capable we become—and the more capable the teams and organizations we lead become. That is how learning multiplies, how mastery develops, and how leadership leaves a lasting impact.