The New Skills
I just saw a post by Kimberly McCollum, The networked nature of information, where she raises an interesting question.
I’ve been following the work literacy blog trying to get an idea of what other people think are the required skills for professionals in today’s workplace. My main research interest has been the process of developing and cultivating a personal learning network/environment and I’ve been pleased to see the work literacy blog devote some time to PLN/PLE. However, the more I learn about PLN/PLE, the less “new” the skill seems.
I completely understand the question, and it is actually an important problem we face because the new parts somewhat get hidden in the parts that have not changed.
“New” depends heavily on what level you are looking. I have run surveys where I ask people to rate their knowledge work skills. The self-ratings are around skills that I describe in the initial knowledge work framework. For example, I ask people to rate themselves around the skills associated with Keep / Organize / Refind / Remind. “How well are you able to keep information that you feel will be important to access later?” Etc. Every knowledge worker recognizes this part of their work, and is able to rate themselves, and generally rates themselves fairly high on these skills.
However, when you drill down a bit and begin to look at specific methods and related tools, you begin to see that many knowledge workers have opportunities to build new skills. In Keep / Organize / Refind / Remind, I tell people that at the highest level, the goal is to keep everything you’ve encountered in a way that makes it easily found at the time of need and also to be kept in a way that you can be reminded of it even if you don’t remember what it is. For example, you might keep the soccer teams phone numbers to be able to pull up when needed, but you also need to have tagged them as the soccer team so that you have a list of them available, because you likely won’t remember everyone on the team. Also, you don’t want to spend any extra time/effort on keeping / organizing that is minimally necessary to meet your future information needs. There’s a bit more detail to this, but roughly that’s the goal.
Considering these goals and considering things like using Google History + search of history, tagging instead of hierarchical folders, social tagging, desktop search, mobile devices and mobile look-up - it’s easy to see that there are a host of new possible methods to apply to this part of knowledge work. I would claim that there are some new knowledge and skills to be developed around the use of these things. The way in which you operate is different given these new methods and tools.
When you begin to look at areas like Scan, Find, Network, Collaborate and Learn, the “new” skills are even more new because we are going from individual to social. This causes a bigger shift for most people. For example, most knowledge workers are quite comfortable with their ability to Find information. That’s because they translate it to search. However, there are types of find operations that are likely much better done via reaching out to people. In Value from Social Media, I point to experience, boundary/existence, confirmation and other types as where you really should reach out to people. Developing this ability is important.
So are these “new skills”? I would claim that the basic structure of knowledge work and the top level categories haven’t really changed. However, within these categories, there is quite a bit of change, there’s lack of awareness around these changes, and change is coming faster such that knowledge workers cannot wait to learn through ad hoc means.
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August 1st, 2008 at 11:09 pm
I agree that “new” depends on the level of skill you are examining. As you point out, there have been numerous changes within the subcategories of knowledge work. At the same time, I think there are a number of marginally effective knowledge workers, perhaps new hires, who are struggling with the top level categories.
I work with college students who tend to be comfortable with using social networking and social media–for social purposes. However, many of the same individuals struggle to see how these skills can transfer to academic or professional work. I think that as we seek to raise awareness of changes in the subcategories, we have to realize that we may need to raise some people’s awareness of the top-level categories as well.
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:22 am
I actually am very dissatisfied with the framework you presented, Tony. It seems too simplistic. There are many factors that come into PLN’s that are not as much “skills” as motivations, understanding of the community in which content is imbedded, and EQ. Like Kimberly, I found younger people have learned to network and even pick and choose what they want to learn. However, for PLN to be effective there needs to be a way that workers are able to prioritize and focus their learning for what they need (not just what they want).
This requires that learners understand what is needed from their organization’s view point (there needs to be some leadership in facilitating learning), a way to document and reward the learning, and a way to help learners put their learning into their own context. In the last case, a community of practice/learning helps those new to the field or organization navigate the community. I think there needs to be more thought and research into the “stages of development” for workers, both in terms of age/experience and within an organization. I feel that someone just out of college will come into a new organization with different realities than someone who as at the end of their career or who changes jobs and comes into a new organization. If we know what the needs and skills are at each “stage”, we can then set up a framework for each transitional point.
August 2nd, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Kimberly - I agree that everyone likely has gaps in their knowledge and skills. Just because you are great with Facebook, doesn’t mean you are good at finding expertise in a network.
Virginia - I am glad you said that. The stunning silence has been killing me. However, I’m not sure what to offer as an alternative. In discussing this with Michele - who equally doesn’t like it, we simply don’t have a better answer that matches with our goals. We’ve looked at some information flow models and problem solving models and we may use those instead of or in addition to the current framework.
I would love any input you or anyone else has on what would go after those goals.
One thing to mention is that Michele and I also somewhat concluded that the framework may or may not be nearly as important as methods. Framework just gives you a bit of context to put the methods into so that people can understand where a method fits into their work. But methods are more important.
August 3rd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Okay, so here’s a <a href:”first pass at the “skills” portion of the framework . I also want to integrate a piece on types of knowledge work, environment, time, age, culture, and other factors affecting knowledge work (I’ll have to do that next week).
August 4th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Very interesting discussion about PLN’s and the idea of “new” skills that knowledge workers should possess in today’s technology enhanced, social media world. I was struck by your point, Virginia, that:
“Like Kimberly, I found younger people have learned to network and even pick and choose what they want to learn. However, for PLN to be effective there needs to be a way that workers are able to prioritize and focus their learning for what they need (not just what they want).
This requires that learners understand what is needed from their organization’s view point (there needs to be some leadership in facilitating learning), a way to document and reward the learning, and a way to help learners put their learning into their own context.”
After reading your quote, a light bulb went off with respect to a post I read the other day from Aaron Strout regarding aligning social media activities with company goals. His post can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/67qvqq
It seems to me that Aaron displays the types of skills that we are talking about here. Let me know if you agree or if I am off base in understanding your point, Virginia.
More importantly, how do we begin to teach employees at ALL stages how to acquire and improve these types of skills?
John Zurovchak
August 4th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Here is another attempt at the correct URL for Aaron’s blog post entitled, Keeping It in a Box from July 30th. Hopefully this one links to the article since the TinyURL above did not: http://forums.prospero.com/MZStrout?entry=112
John Zurovchak
August 5th, 2008 at 9:05 am
John, I wasn’t able to find the blog. However, you might want to look at the link I listed above your comment or my following
post. In fact, I think there should be different training for different experience. If veteran workers are either pressured or shown how this will improve their work, research has shown they will learn and use those tools. But they are not intrinsically motivated to do so.
August 7th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
[...] what knowledge workers need relative to Keep / Organize / Refind / Remind, I’ve discussed in The New Skills that we want to be able to keep track of everything we’ve seen with minimum effort. If users [...]
September 6th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
[...] what knowledge workers need relative to Keep / Organize / Refind / Remind, I’ve discussed in The New Skills that we want to be able to keep track of everything we’ve seen with minimum effort. If users [...]