Take the Field Trip

Field trip days felt different.

We weren't sitting at our regular desks.

There might have been a bus ride.

A packed lunch.

A permission slip.

And somebody's teacher was definitely counting heads every five minutes. 😂

But the interesting thing about a field trip was that we were still learning.

We just weren't learning in the classroom.

We were seeing something.

Experiencing it.

Walking through it.

Asking questions in a different environment.

Seeing how something we'd talked about actually worked.

Sometimes the lesson makes more sense when we leave the classroom.

I think adulthood needs field trips too.

We can spend a lot of time preparing.

Reading.

Taking classes.

Watching videos.

Attending meetings.

Writing plans.

Talking to coaches.

Studying what other people have done.

All of that matters.

But eventually, some things need to be experienced.

Take the field trip.

Go to the event.

Visit the business.

Attend the conference.

Walk through the museum.

Sit in the meeting.

Volunteer.

Shadow someone.

Try the class.

Tour the facility.

Have coffee with someone outside your normal circle.

Go somewhere that allows you to see the lesson differently.

Sometimes we don't even know what questions to ask until we're standing in the environment.

That's one of the things experience gives us that preparation can't always provide.

Context.

You notice how people interact.

How the space feels.

What customers respond to.

What works smoothly.

What seems unnecessarily difficult.

What you would do differently.

What you hadn't considered at all.

And sometimes the field trip teaches us that we don't actually want what we thought we wanted.

That's valuable too.

Exposure doesn't only show us possibilities.

It gives us information.

Expanding consistency can't mean staying so committed to our routines that we stop exposing ourselves to something new.

Structure is important.

Schedules matter.

The assignment matters.

But sometimes we need to leave our normal environment long enough to gain a new perspective.

That doesn't mean every event deserves our time.

We've already talked about capacity.

Everything interesting doesn't require attendance.

Every invitation isn't an assignment.

And networking just for the sake of saying we were in the room can become another distraction.

The field trip should still connect to the lesson.

Ask:

What am I here to learn?

Maybe you're studying customer experience.

Leadership.

Fashion.

Operations.

Community engagement.

Marketing.

Facilitation.

Design.

Business systems.

Or maybe you're simply learning how another person approaches something you're trying to understand.

Pay attention.

Take notes.

Ask questions.

Notice what surprises you.

Then bring something back.

That's the part we sometimes forget.

The field trip wasn't only about getting on the bus.

Eventually, we returned to class.

And what we experienced became part of what we knew.

Adult field trips should work the same way.

Don't only collect experiences.

Apply them.

What did you see?

What did you learn?

What should you try?

What doesn't fit?

What needs to change?

What possibility did you notice that you couldn't see from your desk?

Sometimes the next lesson isn't waiting in another book.

It might be waiting somewhere you've never been.

Get your permission slip.

Pack your lunch if you need to. 😂

And when the lesson calls for it—

take the field trip.