This picture beautifully captures how I feel about knowledge. I took it during a family visit to my partner’s siblings, cousins and their families.
Would they have been able to surface and share this knowledge if they had not been in that situation and had just been sat in a room and asked about starfish and crabs?
What did the older child learn about responsibility being with younger children near water? Did the university student learn from someone much younger or reconnect with a way of curiosity?
My use of Social Technologies at work
I took a positive step, and a firm action, in my own curiosity and sharing in 2017 when I started a Working Out Loud circle (WOL Circles. ) in 2017. “I want to be better at openly collaborating (outside of meetings and personal relationships). I want to learn more about how people are collaborating within Tetra Pak at the moment.”
This was my goal for the twelve weeks of a Working Out Loud circle.
This was also the time when I was beginning to realize, and accept, that I was a learning and development professional and had knowledge and ideas worth sharing.
Work blog
It led to me starting a blog at work, which for me was stepping into the open and making a statement. The first time that I clicked on “post” was quite scary in a bizarre way. As if everyone in the company would read what I had written, and in some way it would lead to problems – of course the reality is it was seen by very few people, all of whom I knew. I posted on 28 times between May 2017 and April 2019. I stopped posting on the blog when Yammer started to take off in the company.
This is more of a personal achievement than one which directly produced results at work for other people, although it was the catalyst for me to be active on Yammer when it was reintroduced into the company in 2018 (it was suppressed after its initial small roll-out due to security issues). I took over the admin rights of the Competence Development group – the previous admin had left the company. I now post regularly in the group, and have changed the name to Learning Network to broaden its appeal.
Podcast
As part of sharing the concept of Working Out Loud I recorded a podcast together with some colleagues. I add this artifact as it is another sign that I was willing to become more open and exposed.
When I listen back to this, and compare it with the videos I made for the learning evaluation course, and for the introduction to this portfolio I can clearly see that I am much more comfortable and natural. In fact, in the podcast I am mimicking, intentionally, the style of ‘In our Time’ on BBC Radio 4
This is not only because I have more experience and confidence with sharing, but also that there has been a shift in the way that upper management use social technologies, from only doing stiff, formal ‘TV news’ style interviews, to self-recorded iPhone videos on the go.
The Future
Sharing and curiosity is playing an ever greater role, and getting more focus, in learning and development in Tetra Pak and most organizations. Social technologies play an important part in this, but we need to make sure that we do not lose sight of how people feel in this relatively new environment. As well as being scary De Clercq (p. 88, 2017) points out “On top of that we are asking people to develop a new skill: translating their expertise into strong messages, text, visuals or sound”.
References
WOL Circles. Available at: https://workingoutloud.com/en/for-you (Accessed: Dec 14, 2020).
De Clercq, I. (2017) Social Technologies in Business: Connect, Share, Lead. Die Keure Publishing.
Portfolio 