How can you stay current in your field when work, jobs, and even professions are constantly changing? - Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)
Harold Jarche talks about the
importance of human connections, of networking and of supporting people in
order to develop your skills and future employability.
We all know the only constant is
change. We are seeing that in our politics, our businesses, our climate…
technology, relationships, industry sectors and so much more. In a world where
everything is evolving and jobs that weren’t even invented ten years ago are
recruiting, how can you possibly be ready for the rest of your career?
Harold
Jarche, learning and work consultant at Jarche Consulting, extolls the virtues
of human connections and cultivating networks as well as making sense of what
we read and are involved in, with deliberate practice of sharing. Jarche has
developed the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) framework to deal with these
challenges in the professional world. “If you develop this externally you don't
have all your eggs in the company basket” commented Jarche of developing
networks and skills to be ready for the changing professional landscape.
Jarche’s
framework suggests that people need to ‘seek’ information, make ‘sense’ of it
and then be able to ‘share’ it. Jarche suggests we need to focus on how to be a
better person in a networked world; how to improve as a human beings and a professionals
in our field. He recommends the book Working
Out Loud by John Stepper for further reading.
Jarche’s
tool for making sense of what he’s working on and seeing is his blog. He calls
them “half-baked” ideas and started writing about PKM in 2004 whilst
self-employed and “needing to do self-development on the cheap.” Jarche’s blog
developed into the first PKM online workshop, costing very little as Jarche
says “we didn't know what we were doing. But we wouldn’t know if we didn’t try
it out.”
This
was a small conversation event and an audience question was “do you use
different platforms to experiment?” Jarche answered that the late “Jay Cross
and I worked on the informal unlearning workshop. We used online platforms and
a different platform every time, and we had to learn one each time. It was
trial by fire, but we got good at the tools. Most learning technology is dumbed
down information technology. If you want cutting edge, go to it. Companies are
taking something from the cutting edge and wrapping it in education, so it's
always out of date. The technology doesn’t matter and no technology is going to
be perfect.”
Another
audience question at the round-table event was: “How do you assess maturity in
learning businesses? For example at this Learning Technologies show, there are
some learning purists. Learning don't have the power base to influence the
business?”
The
response from Jarche was “shut down the training department - I wrote about
this ten years ago. One of the problems is four or five different disciplines
in an organisation are all looking at the same thing. The business doesn’t care
about what learning want to do. You need to start from first principles and
focus on the business.”
Jarche continued this theme, sharing his experience that “senior executives
only ask for ROI if they don't believe in what you are doing. The only way for
learning to be strategic is to be part of the business. Learning is not
separate from work.”
Refocusing
on the challenge of our own career and professional development, Jarche
recommends individuals have their own network and community of practice:
“Someday you may lose your job and you’ll have a skill set transferable to
another job. You also have a skill set to use in your current work. If you want
to change, connect to people who are doing that [job, role or topic]. We are
social animals and social networks are exceptionally important. We can leverage
them, but not in a manipulative way. If you want the network to be strong, you
have to share with them too.”
Jarche
finished by emphasising the sense making and sharing elements of modern
networking, “you know you are in a community of practice when it changes your
practice. The world is changing too fast for formal education to keep up, but
we still have to do great work and be great humans in society. A lot of these
tool scan help us get back in touch with our humanity.”
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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