Quotes About Learning

Having developers share responsibility for the quality of the systems they build not only improves outcomes but also accelerates learning.

It is ignorance that is the mother of all problems, and the only thing that can overcome it is learning.

Dan Milstein, one of the principal engineers at Hubspot, writes that he begins all blameless post-mortem meetings by saying, "We're trying to prepare for a future where we're as stupid as we are today." In other words, it is not acceptable to have a countermeasure to merely "be more careful" or "be less stupid"— instead, we must design real countermeasures to prevent these errors from happening again.

But remember, we're doing this so that we can be better prepared for the next crisis, when we will be equally ignorant of entirely new things that are just as important and will be just as obvious in hindsight

Maybe not," I say. "I'll tell you what I do know, though. Every time that we let Brent fix something that none of us can replicate, Brent gets a little smarter, and the entire system gets dumber.

little fish learn to be big fish in little ponds.

if we all want our developers to be productive, they need to be able to perform builds on Day One.

we are all lifelong learners who must take risks in our daily work.

Studies have shown that practicing five minutes daily is better than practicing once a week for three hours.

the Third Ideal is Improvement of Daily Work. It is the dynamic that allows us to change and improve how we work, informed by learning. As Sensei Dr. Steven Spear said, 'It is ignorance that is the mother of all problems, and the only thing that can overcome it is learning.

The famous Andon cord is just one of their many tools that enable learning. When anyone encounters a problem, everyone is expected to ask for help at any time, even if it means stopping the entire assembly line. And they are thanked for doing so, because it is an opportunity to improve daily work.

If you think IT Operations has nothing to learn from Plant Operations, you're wrong. Dead wrong," he says. "Your job as VP of IT Operations is to ensure the fast, predictable, and uninterrupted flow of planned work that delivers value to the business while minimizing the impact and disruption of unplanned work, so you can provide stable, predictable, and secure IT service.

Studies have shown that practicing five minutes daily is better than practicing once a week for three hours. And if you want to create a genuine culture of improvement, you must create those habits.

When John agrees, I thank him for his time. "Wait, one more question. Why do you believe that this product didn't cause the failure? Did you test the change?" There's a short silence on the phone before John replies, "No, we couldn't test the change. There's no test environment. Apparently, you guys requested a budget years ago, but…" I should have known.

practicing five minutes daily is better than practicing once a week for three hours.

When new learnings are discovered locally, there must also be some mechanism to enable the rest of the organization to use and benefit from that knowledge.

Feedback loops not only enable quick detection and recovery of problems, they also inform us on how to prevent these problems from occurring again in the future. Doing this increases the quality and safety of our system of work, and creates organizational learning.

build ever-deeper knowledge about how to manage the systems for doing our work, converting inevitable up-front ignorance into knowledge.

If I fail, I'll try to make sure it's in a new and novel way.

failure results in reflection and genuine inquiry.

John Allspaw says, every incident is a learning opportunity, an unplanned investment that was made without our consent.

Automated testing helps developers discover their mistakes quickly (usually within minutes), which enables faster fixes as well as genuine learning-learning that is impossible when mistakes are discovered six months later during integration testing, when memories and the link between cause and effect have long faded. Instead of accruing technical debt, problems are fixed as they are found, mobilizing the entire organization if needed, because global goals outweigh local goals.

Picture this scenario: You are in an organization where everyone is making decisions, solving important problems every day, and teaching others what they've learned," Erik says. "Your adversary is an organization where only the top leaders make decisions. Who will win? Your victory is inevitable.

Psychological safety slips away so easily, like when the leader micromanages, can't say 'I don't know,' or acts like a know-it-all,