ABSTRACT
Experience and training is good, but by definition they are looking at what has gone before. They are valuable but not the whole story. Education, using theory to try and see why something worked on a deeper level, is vital in enabling us to apply the lessons of experience. It gives us more ways of looking beneath the surface of what happened to us, a variety of lenses through which to view an event. It allows us to use different language when we talk to board members, we can see that we may have been using communication or management theory without being aware of it. We can be critical of our profession and so we can change it. It gives us more tools than just learning on the job. Taking time out to examine our own practice also means we can become objective about what works.
