You don’t touch it!

When I tried as a parent to “teach” one of my children to use the digital games I gave them – a console, a mini-system or games for the PC – I realized very early on that I only managed to delay their learning. Likewise, when a new digital device entered the house, whether it was a television or a computer, my son Carlos, the youngest, had already installed it while I had not yet finished reading the first pages of the installation manual which, as always, were the “Safety Rules”, an extensive list of everything that could go wrong and things that could not be done…

Digital Natives – unlike their parents, the “digital immigrants” – essentially learn by interacting, testing and correcting; they trust their intuition and feelings, they are open to new experiences and use their creativity as part of learning. We, on the other hand, trust our experience, our ability to reason; we trust the manual, we analyze everything and, before taking a step, we make sure that it is the right one. Lest it break! In other words, in our learning process we use more Left Hemisphere, which processes information analytically and sequentially, step by step, in a logical and linear way, while they learn using more right part of the brain, which corresponds to creativity and emotions, following an intuitive process instead of a logical one, looking for images, symbols and feelings.

It is not surprising that this is so. I still remember when they brought the first color television home. My father installed it very carefully. It occurred to me to turn up the volume a little more than necessary and I was left with the remote in my hand. As it could not be otherwise, I got a “cogotazo“, which is the Canarian version of the colleja, and my father added the usual phrase: “No se toca!”. Likewise, if you tried to open a drawer of your grandmother’s dresser with a lot of verve and you were left with the handle in your hand, this time it was your mother who gave you the cogote and told you the de rigueur ¡No se toca! This “digital immigrant” syndrome can be found in practically all parents, teachers, managers, politicians and business leaders. We seek our way in the choppy waters of the Age of Collaboration, a scenario that is sometimes unknown and hostile to us. The reality is that everything would be easier if we had the humility to recognize that most of what we have learned in the past has been very useful for us to get here, but it is not a guarantee of the future. In other words, it has helped us to make a reasonable career, give our children a good education, have a comfortable house, a couple of cars in the garage, a plasma television in the living room and a mobile phone in our pocket. But very little of this knowledge will help us to understand our children, educate our future students or direct our digital collaborators. This, as you will see, is a fundamental premise in my reflections: we have to reinvent ourselves as parents, as teachers, as politicians and as managers. Very little of what we have created will serve us in a new digital, transparent, necessarily global and changing world. The challenge is to create new organizations capable of operating with transparency, of attracting and retaining new talent, of deserving the creativity and passion of our young people, and where innovation and leadership are the contribution of all. Organizations structured according to the added value of their members, and not in irrelevant hierarchies of power. More human, people-centered organizations, and in which it is possible to give the best of ourselves and be successful professionals without sacrificing our personal and family lives.