The Goo Goo Gaga Principle (Or Why I’m Getting an MBA)
Babies don’t worry about sounding ridiculous. They say "mama" when they mean "bottle." They mimic what people around them say out of context and without understanding of what they mean. They do this over and over and over again, and then somehow, this leads to language.
I studied early childhood development in my college days when I was thinking of becoming a psychologist (marketer is pretty close, right?). I was fascinated with how babies quickly and effortlessly learn something that is so hard to develop later in life.
Or is it?
What if it’s not just the sponginess of baby brains that make it possible for them to learn so quickly, but their absence of self-consciousness. Somewhere in our development, we lose our stomach for being inherently bad at something as part of the process of getting somewhat good at it.
I'd been noodling on this idea for years, but it became more of a core belief after I watched a post-show Q&A with Trevor Noah (video below). Someone asked about his skill for accent mimicry, which led to his biggest tip for learning new languages. He said he just mimics the language as best he can and "sounds like an idiot" for a while.
This is what I’m calling “The Goo Goo Gaga Principle”, and it works the same at age one or 51. But while Trevor Noah can walk into a new country and risk sounding foolish, most of us can’t walk into a meeting and start talking about Net-Present Value models if we’ve never built one before. The trick is finding environments where we can do it openly with lower risk.
This is why I’ve chosen to go back to school to get an MBA.
Plenty of people think a degree program is unnecessary at this stage in a career, and the negative opinions definitely outnumber the positive ones. But in a classroom I can look at a Net Present Value model and say out loud "I have absolutely no idea what I'm looking at," and nobody flinches. So I found a safe space to say "goo goo ga ga." To make mistakes over and over until I get the words right.
Hero image by https://unsplash.com/@mpadb
