Self-directed Learning: Taking Ownership of Your Growth

During the expert session, Steven Campbell-Harris engages the audience through interactive exercises, Q&A sessions, and live demonstrations. 

• The Four Conditions for Self-Directed Learning: Effective learning requires awareness of a knowledge gap, a compelling reason to learn, belief that the skill is learnable, and confidence in your own ability to improve. Missing any one of these conditions can block progress.

• Adopting a Beginner’s Mindset: Expertise can sometimes limit growth through fixed routines and assumptions. Cultivating curiosity and openness helps uncover blind spots and creates new learning possibilities.

• Breaking Skills Into Micro-Skills for Sustainable Growth: Large, overwhelming goals become achievable when broken down into smaller components. Focusing on one micro-skill at a time builds confidence and momentum over time.

Steven Campbell Harris, philosopher and writer, opens the session by introducing self-directed learning as one of the most important capabilities for the 21st-century workplace. He explains that most people are educated in highly structured environments where learning is externally guided, which can leave adults feeling uncertain about how to continue developing without a roadmap. Self-directed learning, he argues, is the antidote: a way to regain ownership, adaptability, and empowerment in personal and professional growth.

The session centres around a practical framework: four essential conditions required for learning something independently. These include recognising a knowledge gap, having a meaningful reason to close it, believing the skill can be learned, and trusting in one’s own ability to improve. Steven shows how learning stalls whenever one of these conditions is missing, offering a diagnostic tool for identifying personal learning blockers.

Steven then explores how individuals can become more aware of what they don’t know. Drawing on cognitive psychology, he introduces the Einstellung Effect, explaining how expertise can narrow problem-solving and reduce openness to new approaches. He contrasts this with the concept of “beginner’s mind,” highlighting how curiosity and humility expand learning potential.

The session also emphasises the importance of challenging assumptions and asking better questions, noting that breakthroughs often begin not with answers but with discovering the right question. Steven shares examples of innovation driven by naïve or unexpected questioning, encouraging participants to adopt a more exploratory mindset.

Another key theme is the role of information environments. Steven warns against “algorithmic containment,” where personalised content bubbles limit exposure to new ideas. He encourages participants to intentionally invite serendipity into their learning through varied sources, unexpected reading, and exploration beyond familiar patterns.

Finally, Steven focuses on confidence and sustainability. He introduces the idea of breaking complex abilities into manageable micro-skills and working within the “challenge zone” between comfort and overwhelm. By taking small, repeatable steps, individuals can steadily expand their capabilities and build long-term learning habits.

The session concludes with actionable takeaways: diagnose which learning condition is missing, practise one small stretch each week, and schedule moments of curiosity to keep learning dynamic, empowering, and continuous.

Problem Solving: A Practical Framework

Many of us think of our ‘problems’ in a very limiting way- as things that are broken which need to be fixed. Yet considered more broadly, a problem is just anything in our lives that could be better than it currently is. Every day we face varying problems; from simple issues such as an overflowing sink, to more difficult challenges like a strained relationship with a colleague. As the philosopher Karl Popper observed, ‘All life is problem solving.’ This session will leave you with the confidence to lean into your problems (rather than just put up with them) and equip you with clear practical tools to get started solving them straight away. 

The Art of Asking Better Questions

We often think innovation begins with a brilliant idea, but the real breakthrough usually comes earlier. As Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine, put it: ‘What people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question’. In today’s fast-paced business  environment, the pressure to react quickly often crowds out deeper thinking. Yet the leaders who create progress aren’t the ones with all the answers - they’re the ones asking better questions. This session focuses on how to move from reactive decision making to deliberate thinking. You’ll explore how asking the right question can unlock clarity, shift perspectives, and lead to your next big breakthrough.

Thinking with AI

Generative AI is transforming knowledge work. But while the technology feels revolutionary, the underlying challenge is not new. Throughout history, every major cognitive tool- from writing and the printing press to calculators and the Internet- has extended human capability while changing the way we think. AI is simply the latest chapter in that story. This interactive talk explores one of the defining challenges of the AI era: how do we use AI without outsourcing the judgment that makes us effective?Drawing on philosophy, cognitive psychology and the latest research into AI, participants discover how AI can be used as a thinking partner to challenge assumptions, expose blind spots and improve decision-making - while avoiding the risks of bias, over-reliance and the gradual erosion of independent judgement. Rather than asking, "How can AI do our work?", this session asks a more important question: "How can AI make us better thinkers?"