Why we don’t learn from history

Past + Present >>> Future

As we prepare to launch our new course, Intercepting the Future, we’ve been digging into some of the tools and techniques that are needed for the foundational skills of learning from the past and responding to the present. And, in doing so, we keep running into a very uncomfortable reality – in general, we don’t learn from the past.

Sure, the details are often different, but what about the general principles from past successes and failures that apply across time from the past into the future?

Your formal schooling

Think about your education and what you (hopefully) learned.

The general principles of addition worked for you in the second grade and are still used today. The general principles of sentence structure have supported your ability to communicate throughout most of your life. You unwittingly learned a general principle of thermodynamics when you burned your hand as a child and avoid hot pans today.

But what did you learn about history? Maybe the duration of the 100-Year War and that Teddy Roosevelt was a Rough Rider. For most of us, we learned to describe events of the past but did not pick up principles useful in the future.

We learned about history – we didn’t learn from history.

Your business schooling

Depending on your age you might remember facts about events such as:

• The space race
• The savings and loan crisis
• The demise of Kodak
• New Coke
• Reagonomics
• The Dot-com bubble
• Occupy Wall Street

So, you might know about these events, but what did you learn from them? If you’re like me, the probable answer is “not much.”

Why don’t we learn from the past?

First, a disclaimer. I’m not an historian. In fact, a D in my freshman college year put me on the path to the Marine Corps (which, in the end, was very good for me.) However, in my advancing years I’ve come to appreciate the subject and read a fair amount about our past.

So, with true humility, I offer the following three reasons we don’t learn from the past.

1. Presentism: We look at the events of the past through the lens of the present and too quickly come to a conclusion. And it’s all-too-often a simple conclusion. The Dot-Com bubble? Simple, people fell in love with the Internet and assumed it was “all about eyeballs” and profit would come eventually.

2. Resulting: Focusing on the results and ignoring the decision process that led up to the results. Kodak lost to digital cameras. “What else do we need to know? They were a chemical company and didn’t know how to respond.” This ignores the fact that early-on they had the best selling digital camera.

3. Disinterest: We tend to dismiss the past as “not really relevant” to the future. We forget that people making good and bad decisions in the past is what got us to today. And the decisions we make today will get us to the future. Yes, the specifics behind the events of the past are usually different from those of today. But human nature is rather consistent over time. A Ford Model-T is very different from a Tesla-S. But what might we learn about Elon by understanding Henry?

Intercepting the future

Our new course will address and integrate answers to four questions.

1. Can you predict the future?

2. Can you anticipate the future?

3. Can you eliminate surprises?

4. Can you mitigate surprises?

Four simple questions but the answers are a bit more complex. Please send comments.

More soon,

Bill