In today’s disruptive and accelerating world associations are asking their people to work in expanding jobs, pushing them to learn outside of their proficiencies. Now more than ever, these jobs require a combined set of skills, while the half-life of our knowledge and skill sets is shrinking quickly.

The real challenge is to stay relevant—to learn how to learn. That’s where the “Google mind” comes in. Curiosity, imagination, and creativity are the core drivers to 21st-century learning.  Just like Google’s search engine, our mind needs to continuously refresh itself. With a Google mind, new insights are created, which expands possibilities for ourselves and our organizations.

Many leaders attribute much of their success to reading. Warren Buffet spends 80 percent of his day reading. Bill Gates reads 50 books per year. Mark Zuckerberg reads one book every two weeks. According to Fast Company, the average CEO reads approximately 60 books a year.  They are all expanding their minds daily.

When you encounter something new, your brain tries to fit it into the world you already know.  By adding more connections, you expand your understanding. This, in turn, emboldens your creativity. Active curiosity strengthens your brain’s wiring. The opposite is also true. If you do not stretch your brain, certain regions begin to atrophy. This is the principle behind the “use it or lose it” slogan.

Successful entrepreneurs teach us a lot about active learning. They ask a lot of questions to a lot of different people. They shape their future rather than try to predict it. They throw themselves into the sea of unknowns and challenge themselves to swim out. They imagine possibilities before they exist. They learn in public and in relationship with others. So how are you learning to learn in your life and your organization?

The Growth Mindset

We all need to activate a growth mindset, to make growth in our daily lives as natural as brushing our teeth. This is especially difficult because within us all there is a battle raging. A battle between our instinctual protective brain and our expanding growth brain. In our rough-and-tumble world, we use our instinctual brain to protect ourselves from danger. But you can’t survive and thrive solely with this mindset.

Growth mindset people see opportunities, think with a broader mind, and prefer action to inaction. They are comfortable with ambiguity, seek out uncertain situations to learn new things, and feel confident they will succeed. Remarkably pragmatic and idealistic at the same time, they view life as a journey of experimentation and continuous learning.

For fixed mindset people, life is a test. The goal is to pass it without looking foolish or stupid.  They feel like they are only as good as their most recent performance. They feel compelled to prove themselves over and over.  Because they are afraid of exposing their deficiencies, they see criticism and setbacks as indications of their basic flaws. Their primary goal is to avoid making mistakes. Inevitably, this narrows their horizons and shuts down their learning and growth.  Sound like a familiar pattern in yourself or your association?

Organizations are designed to reduce risk and promote efficiency. So, we find ourselves challenged by environments that are not conducive to learning. If you want to get unstuck, sometimes you just must do it yourself.

When you encounter something new, your brain tries to fit it into the world you already know. By adding more connections, you expand your understanding. This, in turn, emboldens your creativity. Active curiosity strengthens your brain’s wiring.

The Google Story

Google is a learning machine. Its purpose, products, and people live the mission, always looking forward to pioneer what’s next. The search engine started Google, and the company has evolved into an expanding Alphabet with subsidiaries as diverse as healthcare, autonomous vehicles, satellite imaging, venture capital, fiber-optic infrastructure, and artificial intelligence.  With 74,000 employees, Google is one of the most valuable companies in the world, conducting 1.2 trillion searches each year.

As senior vice president of Google People Operations for 10 years, Laszlo Bock’s job was hiring talent during a period of extensive growth. His counterintuitive advice to job seekers: Grade-point averages are worthless, graduating from college is not a predictor of success, being smart is not enough. What does matter, according to Bock? “For every job, the number one thing I look for is learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information.” In essence, it’s having a Google mind.

Conscious Leadership

There are three steps to cultivating a conscious mind that can deepen your leadership abilities. First, reach back to your younger days, when you were most open and eager to learn. Remind yourself of how you felt and the pleasure you experienced when learning something new. Keep those feelings top-of-mind and use them to help you find motivation to get unstuck.

Then, tap into your curiosity by taking time out of your day to be curious. Stop and wonder, read a book, listen to a podcast that isn’t work related. Realize that you are learning and unlearning all the time. Make curiosity part of your routine.

Finally, get out on the diving board and put your ideas into practice. Start with your own assets and capabilities. Then, use your network to test your ideas. Practice affordable loss—invest only what you are willing to lose.