Pardon My French

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Image copyright Flickr user Aaron Landry (http://www.flickr.com/photos/s4xton)

During this pre-holiday period I met with my co-workers in our Paris office and thus had the opportunity to practice my French. I didn’t exercise it for years, so it’s true that some of my vocabulary faded in time, but still, I was no beginner. Or so I thought. Despite having the advantage of a very good accent, no matter how much I tried, everyone could tell my “maladroitness”.

I promised myself to get some French classes in the near future, but truth is, even though it will help catching up with some of the grammar rules, it won’t really help with my conversation skills.

Want to know why? Because everything I say, even though correct by academic rules, will sound artificial. I learned more French expressions while staying there than in all my French classes! While some limited groceries shopping chats I was even able to sound “Parisian”.

So I figured out that the most appropriate solution to improve my verbal affliction would be not to sign up for some French classes, but rather to pursue as many opportunities to talk to native French speakers. This is how I decided to start attending the local French Institute events and watch as many movies as possible, while also participating to some French expats meetings.

And than it came to me that…this is exactly the principle that applies to the sharing knowledge concept I keep preaching about! About the distinction between mechanical learning and experiential learning and about the importance of that implicit knowledge that even though is so hard to capture and share, it makes such a big difference for the economy of a company’s information exchange and capacity.

Because learning from others that already know how to do it is so much more productive than simply studying about it. Because in practice, the know-how beats all theoretical expertise one might have.

Collaboration is a muscle that all companies should exercise in order to improve their efficiency. Just like in my learning/ improving a foreign language analogy, it expands knowledge at a practical level. So why take the long way?

Merry Knowledge Sharing! 🙂

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