Do not wait to take control of your professional development

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What happens when freelancing becomes the norm?

The US is no longer an industrial-based society where you can count on having a job for life and a sparkly new watch at your retirement party. (And forget about that pension.) According to the Freelancers Union, one in three workers are now toiling as freelancers, temps, “permalancers”, perma-temps, contractors, contingent workers, etc. That amounts to some 42 million freelancers in the US – people who are working without the benefit of employer-sponsored health insurance, 401k plans and flexible spending accounts. – How America is becoming a nation of freelancers

Meanwhile in the UK, self-employment is on the rise.

Self-employment rose by 101,000 to 4.12 million in the three months through November and accounts for 14.1 percent of total employment, figures released by the Office for National Statistics today show. It has grown about 8 percent since the start of the recession in 2008, while the number of employees has fallen 3 percent. – UK self-employment driven by desperation

The automation and outsourcing of work is becoming our wicked problem to deal with as we move into the network era. Most workers have no control over the economy or the changes in the means of production. They just have to roll with the punches, which are coming faster and faster. However, there is one area where workers can take control; relatively easily and inexpensively. They can take control of their professional development.

Most recruiters will tell you that the time to build your network is before you become unemployed. It’s the same with professional development. If the only knowledge-building activities you do are ones mandated by your employer, then you may be in trouble. Developing a network of thoughtful people who can help in your professional life would be a good start. For example, mapping and understanding your network is the first activity in my PKM workshop. I suggest that everyone needs to develop Net Work Skills.

If you think there is a possibility of spending some time in the future as either unemployed, contractual, or freelancing, then now is the time to build a professional development network. Seek out people who can help you; begin habits of regular sense-making activities; and start to share, because only by sharing will you meet the people you should be seeking in the first place.

There are many barriers to directing your professional development from inside your organization, but almost none outside the workplace, other than time and motivation. As Donald Taylor advised, when I asked for suggestions about how to prepare for an unexpected career change, “My advice: always foster your whole network and give as well as take. Don’t wait until you need them. I always say “Never let your first message to someone be a demand for help.” Derek Warnick suggested, “Don’t wait another year to make the change…” With almost limitless access to shared knowledge, it’s easier today than any time before to take control of your professional development.

from training to performance to social

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This past year I conducted an online workshop called “from training, to performance to social“. In November I will be running one on moving from training to performance support, and this will be followed by a workshop on social learning for business.

I have tried to put together the main themes in a slide presentation that covers some of my experience as well as recommendations I have implemented with my clients. My experience is that it is difficult to move a traditional training organization directly to a social learning focus and it is easier to start with performance consulting and then expand to social and collaborative learning. If you are interested in discussing these ideas, then join one of the workshops or contact me to deliver an online or onsite session with your organization.

training performance social.001

  • HJ: Harold Jarche
  • JH: Jane Hart
  • CJ: Charles Jennings

Message for email subscribers

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At last count, there were 565 people subscribed to this blog via email. This service was provided by FeedBurner, a Google company. There used to be a place on the right side of my Home page where you could subscribe. However, Google has stopped development on Feedburner and rumours are that the service will shut down on 20 October 2012, so I have removed that option. As of yesterday, the Feedburner email subscription service was still working. I am not sure how much longer it will be up, given that Feedburner tells me I have zero subscribers.

I have recently added a subscription notice widget powered by WebFish, but it only gives you the link to the new post, not the entire post in the email itself. At this time, this is all I have found that is available. If you would like to continue to receive updates by email, I would suggest subscribing to the new notification system located on the right column of the Home page.

Friday's Finds 172

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Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via social media this past week.

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology.” – E.O. Wilson – via @jhagel

“If you want to know who rules over you in society, find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” – Voltaire – via @marciamarcia

“A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.” – Albert Szent-Györgyi, Hungarian physiologist – via @marciamarcia

 Why doesn’t everyone share their knowledge? by @JohnStepper

The biggest barrier is that each department, and very often individual teams, cling to their proprietary knowledge bases. They’ve created systems and processes optimized for tracking activities instead of increasing user satisfaction and the speed of finding answers. (This is particularly true when help desks are outsourced.) And they’re loath to change what they do for the greater good.

Why do people share? by @OscarBerg

In the New York Times science article “Will You Be E-Mailing This Column? It’s Awesome“, author John Tuerney describes how researchers at the University of Pennsylvania spent 6 months studying the most e-mailed articles from New York Times. The researches found that people preferred to share long positive articles on intellectually challenging and engaging topics, especially such that inspired awe. Furthermore, surprising and emotional articles were more likely to be shared.

Interactive competence – by @EskoKilpi

Creative learning is the new productivity. In creative, interactive work, productivity cannot be measured in quantitative terms or as a difference between input and output, but as the speed and quality of creative learning.

The management task is not to better understand people but to better understand what happens between people. Our world is co-created in relations.

 

Don’t worry, nobody can steal your knowledge

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Why do I share my knowledge? Well, actually, I don’t. I could not share my knowledge with you, if I wanted. There is no such thing as knowledge transfer. Data and information can be transferred, but not knowledge.

So what is the idea behind behind personal knowledge mastery and the Seek>Sense>Share framework if knowledge cannot be shared in the first place? For me, PKM is a set of practices I can use to better articulate my knowledge. Seeking information from diverse sources gives me a better chance of seeing a fuller picture of our complex environment. Taking time to put my thoughts into words forces me to reflect and try to make some sense of the divergent voices coming from all over. Sharing the results of this sense-making gives back to the networks from which I drew my information and also provides more feedback loops from a variety of perspectives. It enhances serendipity.

Sharing information and viewing it through our individual filters is the best that we can hope for in terms of knowledge transfer. But not sharing would be much worse. As Luis Suarez writes on a very related post:

To me, since we are all embarked on a lifetime learning experience of what we know, what’s around us, who we are, what we do and why we do it, who we connect with, etc. etc. knowledge sharing is innate to our human nature of wanting to connect and collaborate with others. We, human beings, are social beings, and as such have been bound to share what we know with others, so that our learning curve never becomes flat. On the contrary.

While knowledge cannot really be shared,  our knowledge-making experiences can. Perhaps that is why we love stories. They are a glimpse into others’ knowledge, more nuanced than any other communication medium. Sharing is essential for our own sense-making. So share as much as possible. Nobody can steal your knowledge anyway. But we will all lose, if we don’t share it.
knowledge stealing

Top 10 Tools for Learning

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Jane Hart is asking for submissions to her annual Top 100 Tools for Learning. Please vote, in the next 10 days, before it closes for another year. I really like the fact that Jane has done this for several years and we can see some interesting trends. Stay tuned for Jane’s analysis this year.

Here are my top 10 choices, with a few changes over the past year:

10: Google Plus: I am still learning how to use this platform which gives you great control over filtering how much information you get. The live Hangouts feature is a killer app, in my opinion.
9: Slideshare: An easy way to share presentations so that people can view them before or instead of downloading them.
8: Flickr: Still a great way to share photos online. I like the feature that automatically creates images in multiple sizes.
7: Gimp: An open source (free) image manipulation tool is very helpful for presentations and papers.
6: BuddyPress: This variant of WordPress powers the Social Learning Centre and has allowed me to deliver my workshops to more people.
5: Keynote: Apple’s presentation application has enabled me to improve my slide presentations, through its simplicity and lack of clip art.
4: Twitter: The micro-blogging platform lets me stay in loose touch with many people.
3: Diigo: Social bookmarks are a quick way for me to save a web page and find it easily (I do an auto backup to Delicious).
2: Google Reader: This feedreader lets me subscribe to many websites and stay current with bloggers and news feeds.
1: WordPress: It powers my blog, which is the core of my self-directed learning and online reflection. It’s easy to use, has a large community, and there are many plug-ins and additions available.

Weaving the next workplace

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My last post, from responsibility to creativity, was picked up by Joachim Stroh, who created an image showing the problem with thinking of jobs as things to be filled. The image also connects with the post on how organizations can thrive in the network era.

I like this visual representation. It shows that thinking of jobs as buckets to fill can leave them empty or half-full. Instead, if you think of the organization as a network, then you look for gaps that need to be connected. This can be done by adding another node (person) or making better connections (roles & responsibilities). It may just be introducing one person to another, or closing triangles. It’s amazing how a shift in the perception of the nature of work could completely change an organization. A primary job of leadership then becomes network weaving. Network Weaving has four laws, writes Jack Ricchiuto: Luck; Innovation; Influence; and Growth.

Getting things done in networks barely resembles the rules of getting things done when the whole is divided into power, knowledge, and responsibility haves and have-nots. Best and worst of all, networks do not “play by the rules” because they are intrinsically too fluid and self-organizing for that. And because of that, they tend to be far more incubatorial than traditionally designed organizations and social structures when it comes to innovation and resiliency.

from responsibility to creativity

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I originally wrote new work, new attitude in 2008, but would like to revisit and add to it.

2008

Nine Shift has a few posts on the changing nature of work and how the idea of responsibility usurped morals during the industrial age (See Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3).

“In the Industrial Age of the 20th century, you didn’t have to be of good moral character to work in the factory. But you did have to be responsible.  And so teachers in the 20th century schoolhouse and college taught (still teach) responsibility.   And by that  teachers mean specific behaviors.

Those behaviors are now obsolete. They made sense in the factory …  But not in the virtual office.”

As we moved from morality to responsibility one hundred years ago, are we now shifting from responsibility to creativity? If we are, then most of our organizational tools and measurements about productivity may have to get thrown out.

2012

“The word ‘responsible’ is one of those code-words that hides a whole range of preferred behaviours, from respecting copyright to keeping the language clean to refraining from bullying and hurtful behaviour to staying on topic, sitting up, and paying attention.” —Stephen Downes

From morality to responsibility to creativity

The past 100 years have been the first time that we have had a large middle class in many parts of the world (though this is quickly shrinking in places). The Corporation was an experiment to deal with large scale capitalism, and we had no real models to base it on, other than the military or the church. Therefore we got hierarchies. But perhaps this period was not a blip and really just the first phase of dealing with the new electric communications medium? Now that we are ~150 years post-telegraph, we are finally realizing that things have radically changed. It’s like the early 1600’s in Europe, 150 years after the printing press, and all hell is breaking loose. For a more detailed perspective on communication shifts and literacies, I would recommend “Why Johnny and Janey Can’t Read, and Why Mr. and Ms. Smith Can’t Teach: The challenge of multiple media literacies in tumultuous times” by Mark Federman.

An IBM poll of CEOs (2010) found they deemed creativity to be “the NUMBER ONE leadership competency of the successful enterprise of the future”. Today, being responsible is not good enough. Ross Dawson says that, “in a connected world, unless your skills are world-class, you are a commodity.” He suggests that there are three skill sets necessary to transcend commoditization — Expertise, Relationships, and Innovation. Creativity is needed to choose the right area of expertise, develop diverse professional networks, and be innovative. In our education systems, creativity is a fringe subject and is not nurtured or lauded.

Barbara Ormsby recently commented that, “Responsibility and creativity are two rather different qualities. This helps understand why the transition from clear responsibilities to practised creativity is such a huge challenge in organizations today.” So how can we improve creativity in organizations? We should learn from the creatives!

Make space for conversations

Creativity is a conversation – a tension – between individuals working on individual problems and the professional communities they belong to. —David Williamson Shaffer

Provide breathing room

Creativity shouldn’t–can’t–be a luxury, though. It can’t be something that we bring to a problem only when we have the space and time for it, because more often than not, we will be in situations where we lack both. We need to find ways to build it into the DNA of our working lives so that it becomes a part of who we are, not something we do only when the circumstances are “right.” This is our only security in a world that shifts constantly, demanding of us new ideas and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. —Michele Martin 

 Abandon ‘jobs’

The core assumption of the job, that it can be ‘filled’ [just like the minds of learners], needs to change. This is the key constraining concept for the creative economy. It presumes common skills and the mechanistic view that workers can be replaced without disruption. But who could replace Van Gogh, Picasso or even Steve Jobs? Complex work requires more creativity, and confining individual creativity within the bounds of a mere job description is debilitating. Structured jobs can suck individual creativity and create an organizational framework that discourages entrepreneurial zeal.

Develop improv skills

Improv comedy can help people deal with uncertainty. They have to make difficult decisions on the spot and think quickly without scripts or plots.

In a business world that’s more uncertain than ever it pays to be able to think on your feet. That’s why some business schools are using improvisation classes to teach skills such as creativity and leadership … As well as teaching people to react and adapt, he [Robert Kulhan] said improvisation can teach creativity, innovation, communication, teamwork and leadership. —CNN Route to the Top

 

Four circles to bind them

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I’m still playing with Google Plus and have not made it an integrated part of my personal knowledge mastery process yet. One aspect of G+ I do not like is the inability to add tags or categorize what I find of interest, or to easily share with other networks. Sharing inside, of course, is easy, as Google would prefer you stay inside their ecosystem. What I usually do with G+ posts I like is 1) post them to Twitter, 2) add as Twitter favourites 3) and then curate them on my weekly Friday’s Finds blog post. It’s a bit convoluted but it kind of works. I could do the same by checking my ‘+1’ tagged items and regularly curating them on my blog.

I really like the Google Plus Hangout feature, which allows for immediate video conferencing, for up to 10 people, and integrates tools such as Google Documents for collaborative writing. Using the ‘On Air’ function lets you live broadcast your meeting via YouTube, which is then automatically recorded and saved as a YouTube video. It is seamless. The audio/video is very high quality with much less lag than Skype.

There is a feature of G+ that makes me think it can be the one to rule them all. These are circles. You add people to circles (which you can name) and then post updates on G+ to one or more circles of your choosing, or make them Public. Almost all of mine are public. But circles work both ways. You can control how much you see from each circle. I would suggest starting out by creating four circles, one for each setting. The settings slider appears on the right when you click on one of your circle names from the G+ Home page.

 There are four settings available:

  • Show nothing
  • Show some posts
  • Show most posts (what G+ recommends, but that’s for them, not you)
  • Show every post

There is also a bell symbol on the right  to subscribe to notifications (it’s a push function so you don’t miss anything). You see these settings explained when you hover your cursor over the slider.

So if you create four initial circles, you could use them as a filter to get better signal and less noise. You don’t need to spend a lot of time making a decision on where to put someone, as it’s easy to move a person from one circle to another. Fine-tuning this over time  could make your G+ stream a valuable information resource.

None: For people who have you in their circles, but you are not really interested in what they have to say, but feel you should be connected anyway. This group is handy if you don’t want something to be Public but want to reach a broader audience.

Some: These are people you know slightly or perhaps post too many updates.

Most: For people you know better, or usually post interesting things, but you don’t feel to you need to see everything.

Every Post: Good for work teams or fellow employees. I use this for my Internet Time Alliance colleagues.

I have found some deep conversations on G+, which is not limited by 140 characters. It integrates with other Google platforms, so it’s easy to share from Google Reader to Google Plus. Over time, I am finding it a good place to have some meaningful conversations. As with Twitter, if you find G+ boring, then you are following (circling) the wrong people.

Friday's complexity

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Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via Twitter (and other places) this past week.

Leadership as emergent, co-created and unheroic – by @JohnnieMoore

leadership is a complex social process enacted by the many. It is not a rational, scientific endeavour practised by a few, gifted individuals. That is to say, it is an emergent phenomenon that is co-created in the moment of people’s everyday interactions. As such, it is a normal characteristic of the day-to-day relationships of interdependent people.
~ Chris Rodgers

@johnt – Responding to Complexity & Uncertainty

Ralph Stacey (on shadow system dynamics), Karl Weick (social psychology of organising and sense-making), Manuel Castells (the network society), Albert Bandura (social learning, self-efficacy, social psychology), Stafford Beer (viable systems and distributed control), Albert Cherns (socio-technical principles), Russell Ackoff (systems thinking) etc all intellectual heroes. In my view, their insights on complex social systems leave many soc. biz ‘experts’ on the starting blocks. ~ @smartco (in comments)

@JerryMichalski – really interesting ideas on complexity and systems thinking – by @JurgenAppelo