“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities,
in the expert’s mind there are few.”
– Shunryu Suzuki

Is it easier to train a beginner or an expert? I need only reflect on my repeated failure to learn a foreign language in my adult years in order to answer this question. I’ve studied both Spanish and French, but whenever I encounter French or Spanish speakers, I must arduously translate the words and sentences I happen to recognize into English in order to understand them. At this point, I’ve come to the conclusion that if I really want to learn either of these languages, the only thing left for me to do is to pick up and move to Paris or Mexico City, to immerse myself in an environment where I am forced to upend what I know about language and become a beginner again.

Well-designed simulations are like these foreign countries I imagine moving to. They offer the opportunity to immerse ourselves in environment in which we are forced to challenge our expertise, to disrupt the long-rehearsed patterns of our daily lives and work. In doing so, simulations allow us to grasp the possibilities of learning complex tasks and systems in ways that cannot be merely studied. This is where the true power of training simulations lies – in turning all of us “experts” into beginners in some way.

This is not to say that expertise isn’t useful, but it is inherently limited from a learning perspective. When we call upon it, we foreclose on possibilities for viewing our area of expertise in a different, often deeper way. Therefore, the first question in designing a training simulation is not so much how we can create experts but how we can get individuals with varying areas of expertise to approach a task or challenge with a beginner’s mind. It is from that place that we can affect the greatest behavioral change in our audiences.