Tag Archives: Cognitive Economy

Meta Cities: Repurposing Where We Live and Work

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Harvard Business Review recently released a 2023 talent management piece by Richard Florida from the University of Toronto and Vladislav Boutenko, Antoine Vetrano, and Sara Saloo, all with Boston Consulting Group, entitled The Rise of the Meta City. Their thesis reveals an emerging development in the evolving work-from-home (WFH) paradigm that is novel and worth considering as we envision the future of both our careers and where to become a resident.

It is no secret that mobility-enhancing technologies combined with the face to face limitations wrought by the Pandemic resulted in a rapid expansion of remote work. From approximately 6% of the American workforce working remotely in 2019 to 18% by 2021 shows how briskly the phenomenon swelled. A recent BCG survey from August 2023 indicates that only 7% of companies require full time return to work whereas 8% of companies have discarded offices completely. This means the vast majority of business are operating with some form of hybrid working.

A consequence of the proliferation of WFH employment is that many more digitally-centric employees are choosing to live outside of the traditional commute radius from their employers’ offices. With customary commutes being curtailed, workers are incentivized to look at residential options in areas that are more affordable and which feature a higher quality of life. For example, a LinkedIn study identified small to mid-sized cities receiving WFH transplants such as Springfield, MA, Tallahassee, FL, Portland, OR, College Station, TX, and Wenatchee, WA. Some locations actually offer cash incentives for WFH employees to move there like Tulsa, OK and Perry County, IN.

This realignment of workers from office to home and from employer-based cities to increasingly distant residential locations is starting to reveal patterns. A significant new template emerging is the rise of what Florida et al call the “Meta City”. Initially, it is helpful to think of meta cities as not entirely fixed geographically. The old inner city to suburb to exurb to rural model is not applicable here. Rather, the dimensions of the meta city extend from a major economic hub city to a host of far flung smaller cities in other parts of the country or globe. Modern telecommunications technology and talent flows allow for cities which may be geographically separate to operate as distinct units economically.

Some examples are called for to better visualize this spectacle. New York City is a top-dog economic hub in a number of industries, but most importantly in the finance sector. Financial talent flows into and out of NYC most measurably with other American cities like Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Atlanta, among others. This hub and satellite configuration comprises a finance meta city. London, too, is major finance hub with Manchester, Birmingham, Dublin, Edinburgh, and Cambridge serving as financial talent satellites. San Francisco is a principal technology hub city connected to smaller, but also tech heavy cities like Austin, Seattle, Boston, and San Diego.

The concept of talent flow is crucial to an understanding of the growth of meta cities. The flow of talented employees refers to physical mobility of people among the cities of the meta unit and also to remote contributions made by talent within the unit. To illustrate, Emily retains employment with Company A in New York, but chooses to live and work from Miami because of the high cost of living in New York and its long winters. Jason also works at Company A in New York where he intentionally lives because he loves the vibrancy of the city, and from there collaborates with Emily on a daily basis as part of a development team.

Although Florida et al do not refer to rural living, presumably the meta cities are speckled with geographically dispersed talent who “work” inside of meta cities, but live in a variety of non-urban locations.

Meta cities are an interesting outgrowth of the remote working trend, a glimpse into how the new generations choose to live and work, and also how the economy of the twenty-first century is coming into its own.

 

AI and Your Career Considered

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Amper Music is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) application that can create music based on inputs from human users who may know nothing about music theory or how to play a musical instrument. Requests and conditions are submitted concerning the type of music desired for purposes such as podcast themes or home video soundtracks. Amper Music in turn generates original music.

DALL• E is an AI program that empowers human users to produce art and realistic images in a variety of modes and forms. Taking text descriptions which have been provided by users, the AI goes about creating stunning illustrations and depictions. Little to no human artistic talent is required to develop original art.

ChatGPT is a newly released open-source AI chatbot designed to yield fresh high quality written text on a wide variety of topics, including software code. Based on human user editing suggestions ChatGPT will even revise its text constructing multiple drafts until the output is just what the user wants for anything from a set of complicated directions to marketing copy.

Another chatbot called Franz Broseph was able to compete against twenty online players from around the world last year in a game of Diplomacy. The game compels participants to engage in political negotiations, form alliances, apply military strategies, and basically win a World War I simulation. Guess who came out on top? Yup, Franz Broseph.

We are no longer waiting to see when AI will revolutionize the world. The disruptive transformation is currently underway.

Note that I used the word disruptive above. Is this a good thing or not? Well, the term certainly brings to mind the late Clayton Christensen and his popularizing of the concept “disruptive innovation”. Christensen highlighted a process whereby a new product or service is introduced at the bottom rung of a market ladder. Eventually, it catches on and grows in usage displacing much if not all of the traditional competition. What Walmart did to Sears is an example.

In my judgment, it is safe to assume that the AI examples above are representative of a larger AI disruptive innovation which is in the process of rolling over the work world as we know it. Again, is this good or bad? Well, it could be both.

The manner in which writers, music composers, and artists have operated customarily is clearly threatened. AI is now a major new competitor on the block. To be sure, in the short term at least, consumers who prefer conventionally produced text, music, and art will purposefully acquire it and shun the AI-generated material. But eventually the innovations will seep into the mainstream and could very well become the new ordinary.

As the Borg in Star Trek put it, resistance is futile. AI engineers and self-learning AI itself will continue to breed one disruptive innovation after the next, simply because they can. Ethics or a concern for the greater wellbeing of humans, if it is ever considered, will not inhibit the creation of these products and services. If anything, these novelties will be presented as good for people.

Perhaps, these inventions will be good for people. Maybe “better” writing, music composition, and art will result. Possibly the shift we saw from an agrarian economy to a mechanized one during the Industrial Revolution will be an apt analogy to what we are now experiencing. Time will tell.

One thing is clear, however. A simultaneous adaptation to new practices and systems will need to occur such that the AI-fueled modernizations are integrated into the new normal while human careers can continue to flourish. Possibly first drafts of essays will be written by ChatGPT and future iterations will be the result of human edits and prompts bringing about a spectacular essay produced by an otherwise mediocre human writer.

The question I ask myself is, if partnering of machine and human does not lead to higher quality outcomes, then why are we bothering with AI?

 

 

 

 

American Business Needs Good Teachers

Posted on by Bill Ryan

A disturbing trend could befall the quality of job candidates available for business hiring in the not too far distant future. We are at risk of finding that the pool of potential hires may be deficient in language and mathematical processing skills and in their ability to think critically relative to past generations. Why might this be so? Simply put, the United States is now experiencing a shortage of highly qualified teachers. And there is no end in sight of this problem. 

A weakening of the teaching profession consequently leads to more students receiving less instruction and lower quality education. It is hard to imagine how a nation that is unable to educate its children adequately can expect to succeed commercially, especially in a globalized economy. Yet, this is the situation the U.S. is now facing. 

Tuan Nguyen, Chanh Lam, of Kansas State University and Pula Bruno of the University of Illinois in an August 2022 paper entitled Is There a National Teacher Shortage? revealed there are 36,000 vacant teacher openings and 163,000 teaching positions being occupied by underqualified instructors. They contend these are conservative estimates. 

Josh Bleiberg, an education professor at the University of Pittsburgh, claims the quantity of qualified teachers is falling nationwide and the few states seeing an increase in certified teachers are still not able to keep up with growing enrollments. 

One does not have to look too deeply to see why this is the case. Professor Bleiberg’s research discloses that teacher wages, when adjusted for inflation, have been mostly stagnant from 2000-2020, while student caseloads have been consistent. 

Also, during this time teachers and administrators have witnessed an expansion of accountability initiatives designed allegedly to improve teacher proficiency. Although some accountability measures are necessary, too many have been based on student test scores, leading to needless stress, system gaming, and dilution of curriculum. Making maintenance of teacher credentialing more rigorous with no corresponding compensation increase is bad business. 

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that students earning bachelor’s degrees in education has gone from 176,307 in 1970-71 to 104,008 in 2010-11 to 85,058 in 2019-20. And this decline is before the pandemic. 

We cannot underestimate how negative Covid has been for the teaching profession. The terms and conditions of teacher employment degraded overnight. Concerns about their own health and safety while trying to manage instruction remotely or in super-spreader classroom environments while also dealing with students who had experienced the loss of family members has been extremely detrimental. Many older and more experienced teachers chose early retirement rather than risk their physical and emotional health. 

Moreover, we now have the politicization of education and use of teachers as punching bags by those who claim students are being brainwashed with various culture war issues of a racial or sexual nature. Let’s throw in the risk of school shootings and we can see why a national problem exists. Given the relatively low pay, high productivity demand, health and safety risks, and politically oriented pressure it is no wonder many otherwise great teachers are saying, No Thanks! 

This is not just a problem for one industry. It is a potential loss for our economy if we have ill-prepared students growing up to become our available workforce. It is in the best interests of business to recognize the looming threat and to get on board attempting remediation. 

As a nation, we can start by accepting the value teachers provide and offering them the prestige they deserve. Teachers are much more of a resource than they are an expense. It is past time to honor them for being the assets they are. From there we can tackle issues of adequate compensation, reasonable employment conditions, and greater self-determination. 

It is for the greater good of our economy, our country, and our children that we get this right. 

Flextime Workplaces: An Update

Posted on by Bill Ryan

As has been widely reported over the past couple of years, workplaces, particularly in the knowledge economy, have either undergone or are being pressured to add flexibility features to their operations. The combination of Covid-related adjustments and technical innovations has resulted in a reassessment of what productivity and by extension appropriate workplace agency looks like in the modern workplace. 

A 2021 Ipsos survey revealed that globally 30% of workers would attempt to leave their jobs if required to return to the pre-pandemic office setting. Many of the ever-plugged-in younger cohort of workers see only an upside to having jobs with flextime. Benefits such as managing the complex demands of modern living, taking care of children and elderly parents, reducing commuting time, and functioning when one is most energetic and constructive during the day are among the advantages cited as desirable with pliable scheduling and task requirements. 

Flextime features are now much more present in recruiting job descriptions. Some of this is undoubtedly because of the increased demand for flexibility from a workforce that seems to be sorting itself into those oriented toward results-only vs. traditional workplaces, but also due to the uncertainty of the future. Covid has not completely gone away and with further environmental changes said to be coming from climate change, who knows what is next? Disruption is at least as likely as stability when planning operationally. 

However, workplace changes of the sort being described here need to be assessed and designed thoughtfully. It can be easy to dump on traditional workplaces as having rigid, arbitrary, and ineffectual routines, like for example, habitually scheduled staff meetings laden with fill-in blah, blah, blah. Yet, as resiliency transformations occur it can be useful to see not only what is gained, but also what is lost by such modifications. 

A case could be made that as customary practices dissolve not all the consequences may be necessarily positive. Of key importance is what it means to be professional. Parameters were established over time to separate work life from non-work life. We got used to sliding in and out of work modes with a regularity that brought predictability, certainty, and some semblance of balance. 

One negative element of blurring the distinction between work and leisure time is the always “being on” phenomenon. When flitting in and out of work mode multiple times per day, including answering supervisor emails at 8:30 pm and being ready to respond to the Amsterdam office at 6:30 am, cumulative work time can approach 10-12 hours. It begs the question of who benefits. Probably not the worker. 

Also, professional norms and protocols used in performance reviews and advancement decisions have been based on an in-person work context. Are the expected actions of workers who work from home holding up fairly to legacy achievement standards? Managers still wedded to the notion that time on task always equals productivity may be less inclined to favorably view fragmented work as effective, even if the results are of similar quality or perhaps even better than before. 

This can be especially problematic for new hires onboarded with a company practicing flextime. How well can management really get to know their direct reports when they are working remotely? Perhaps fine — or perhaps not. New workers are motivated to do well at their new jobs and are trying to navigate expectations and learn company culture digitally. Might they be ripe for various types of exploitation, such as working exceptionally long hours or having to face other unreasonable demands from management or co-workers in a flextime environment? The possibility is certainly there. 

Decentralization does have its benefits. But it also could have liabilities. As we redefine what it means to be professional in a flextime world, we need to be mindful of how to achieve efficiency in a way that rewards both management and front-line workers. This challenge is a subset of organizational agility and a crucial one going forward. 

A Coming Workforce Transformation

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Career prospects for women during the economy of the past couple of years show significant disillusionment. By the end of 2020, 140,000 jobs in the U.S. which had been held by women were lost in female-dominant industries like education, hospitality, and retail according to Business Insider. The National Women’s Law Center reported in 2021 that about two-thirds of all minimum wage jobs are held by women. Unemployment rates remain high for women of color and women with disabilities. 

The past years have also not been encouraging for professional women seeking to secure leadership positions, particularly in highly capitalized businesses. Julia Boorstin of CNBC reported in 2020 that of the 500 largest American companies only 6% of CEOs were women. Not only that, but there is this occurrence of women being placed in CEO positions of troubled companies struggling to hang on. The phenomenon is known as the “Glass Cliff” problem. If the ship cannot be quickly righted to profitability, then it can be easier for some to say how a woman was given a chance to show leadership, but it just did not work out. 

McKinsey reveals another stunning circumstance. The proportion of women in jobs declines as the amount of responsibility embedded within these jobs increases. Women make up 50.8% of the American population, but account for 47% of entry-level positions, 38% of management assignments, and 33% of senior management occupations. For every 100 men who move into management roles, there are 85 women who do so. 

The history of women in the workforce facing discrimination, unequal pay, and harassment in one form or another is a painfully long one. However, there are some other statistics which curiously suggest more positive changes may be coming for women in the workforce. 

The writer David French points to some recent education stats showing men are slipping in acquiring the schooling necessary to stay highly qualified and competitive for the good jobs, and for leadership roles particularly. For example, at the end of the 2020-2021 college academic year women comprised 59.5% of the overall student body, the highest ever, and men only 40.5%. This data is from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. 

Furthermore, the 2020-2021 school year showed a decline of 1.5 million students relative to five years earlier. 71% of that drop was in men leaving U.S. colleges and universities! For a reason I cannot explain, men’s attendance has fallen such that they have become a minority cohort in higher education. Can a drop in men’s career prospects relative to women, including in leadership, be far behind? 

One does not have to look far to notice an unmistakable correlation between levels of education and career success. Acquisition of knowledge, skill, experience, contacts, and confidence are all derived from furthering one’s education. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics most recent data concerning earnings and unemployment rates by educational attainment show median weekly earnings for those holding only a high school diploma to be $781, but with an unemployment rate of 9%. The bachelor’s degree college graduate in comparison earns on average $1305 per week with an unemployment rate of 5.5%. 

To be sure, the traditional four-year college degree program model is under serious review, as it should be, by those who foot the high cost. More targeted and lower cost education and credentialing options are providing increasing competition to legacy college and university programs. That’s fine. But if men think the good jobs and leadership positions will always be waiting for them as in the past, while women are actively preparing to compete and hold those occupations for themselves at rates superior to males, then men may be in for a rude awakening soon. 

As women gain more of the good jobs and leadership roles, they are likely to open more doors for other women to participate more fully in quality education and work opportunities. As education attainment shifts more to women, so too will their employment and leadership strength. 

Workers Are Flexing Their Muscles

Posted on by Bill Ryan

An unmistakably big story in the 2021 career space has been about what is being dubbed “The Great Resignation” or “Turnover Tsunami”. Of course, I am referring to the throngs of workers in both the relatively high paying knowledge economy, but also in the lower income sectors, like hospitality and retail, who are leaving or not returning to their pre-pandemic fields of employment. 

A whopping 40% of the global workforce has left or is planning to leave jobs this year. The U.S. Labor Department has never seen such an acute spike in resignations in the twenty plus years it has been tracking such statistics. 

The popular media has for months now been pumping out pieces referring to the phenomenon and the suspected reasons behind it, such as higher savings rates thanks to government financial assistance, fear of catching the virus at work, insufficient childcare options for working parents, and a growing realization that a lot of hiring is now going on.  

However, the monumental reason for this employment churn appears to be a dignity factor. The Covid pandemic is allowing for a massive reassessment, and by extension, a realignment of what truly matters in one’s work and life. 

Shelter-in-place directives, social distancing, and closed office buildings, restaurants, and stores shook people’s mindsets in numerous ways. Many front-line “essential” workers who were heralded as heroes early in the pandemic are now either burnt out or tired of the abuse they get, like healthcare workers. Many well compensated workers ensconced in jobs pertaining to information flows and the means of production are bailing from positions because of the stress levels and long hours. Those on the low socioeconomic end feel abused, disrespected, and exploited and are not going to take it anymore. The number of workers and the type of worker taking the employment shift plunge are both expanding. 

This spectacle is causing economic hardships for a range of stakeholders from business owners to customers. The flux in employment is helping to fuel in part the larger pandemic-related worldwide economic convulsion. Shouldn’t we all be really concerned about this dramatic and disruptive turn of events?  

Yes, we should be, but not of fear for the interests of the wealth holders becoming suddenly inconvenienced, but in support of workers who are all in different sounding ways and from different points of view collectively saying they want and expect fair compensation, respect, and a voice in how their careers are going to develop. This brief period in history may be seen as a possible inflection point in the 21st century morphing of work and career into something different from the way it has been in the past. 

I come back to the three intrinsic motivators for professional workers eloquently described by Daniel Pink about ten years ago. Pink wrote and spoke about the need and quest for autonomy, mastery, and purpose as to what gets successful and satisfied workers out of bed in the morning. We are more motivated and driven to perform well at our jobs when we feel we have relatively free rein to innovate and produce, when we feel we are developing a skill or talent, and when we feel that what we are doing at work matters in a value sense. 

It seems to me that what many of these job searchers are looking for comes very close to what Pink is describing. Combine dignified levels of compensation with workplace cultures that honor worker autonomy, mastery, and purpose and a job can become more satisfying and sustainable. 

I get that some just want a decent job and not a career, but what makes an employee want to stay and thrive is fundamentally not very different between a highly educated contributor and an hourly employee. Dignity and respect can go a long way. 

Revitalizing Meritocracy

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Merit denotes goodness. It is a word synonymous with excellence, value, and quality. We strive to live meritorious lives, because to do so brings happiness to others and distinction to ourselves. When society thrives, it does so largely due to the actions and contributions of people displaying merit. 

There is no hotly contested debate about the virtue of merit. It is generally thought to be a desired attribute, particularly among employees. What boss would not want to have positive, reliable, and worthwhile workers on her team? And yet, another term derived from the word merit, meritocracy, seems to be under fire. 

Broadly speaking, meritocracy refers to an institutionalizing of talent, ability, and skill which when present and operational results in optimally run organizations, whether in business, government, or the nonprofit sector. Compensation and power are steered toward those individuals who best demonstrate the desired traits of a meritocracy such as intelligence, valued credentials, and solid performance. 

I always thought meritocracy was an affirmative construct, so I have been surprised to see that meritocracy has now become, counter-intuitively for me at least, a controversial concept. To see why, I decided to examine what the dispute is all about. 

Examples of meritocratic administration are historic reaching back millennia. More recently though, it turns out the word meritocracy was originally coined and used derogatorily in 1958 by a British politician who was criticizing the British education system as overly favoring student intelligence and aptitude above other characteristics, leading to elitism. 

It was not until 1972 when Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell put a positive spin on the term by championing a combination of intelligence and energy as ideologically desirable. Today, there are many proponents and critics of meritocratic systems. Their divergent views seem to rest on differences in how one determines what is fair in an organization or institution. 

For example, Jim Whitehurst, who is now president of IBM, is bullish on meritocracy. He sees only advantage in strongly rewarding the best people with the best ideas. Establishing a culture that encourages listening and sharing and where every associate can contribute makes it easier for management to discern which inspirations result in high end gains over time. By enabling leaders to spot emerging talent and to position this ability where they can create the greatest value, followed by generous compensation for the quality influencers, is the hallmark of a highly functioning meritocracy. Keeping associates engaged and identifying in-house leadership makes for a stronger organization. 

A recent significant criticism of meritocracy was released in 2019 in the form of a book, The Meritocracy Trap by Yale law professor Daniel Markovits. He sees meritocracy as “a pretense, constructed to rationalize an unjust distribution of advantage.” According to Markovits, meritocracy has two profound liabilities — it is often an unfair system that benefits those of a certain traditional type of leadership, say white males over women or minorities, and that those seen as meritorious find their lives consumed by competition and long hours devoted to the company. Hence, the trap. In practice, not all talent really percolates to the top and if one is “lucky” enough to be among the chosen, then one’s life becomes less than satisfying. 

So, does meritocracy need reform? It depends on how “fair” is defined within an organization that purports to practice it. The style of meritocracy described by Whitehurst sounds fair to me, if and only if, the culture is truly open to high quality ideas no matter who puts them forth and that selection of those with desired aptitudes are chosen for their skills and abilities alone and not for extraneous considerations. And Markovits’ point about exploitation of expertise is also in need of monitoring, primarily by those whose careers and lifestyles are most affected. 

One thing advocates and critics alike can agree on is that merit is a virtue to be promoted and defended. We all benefit when it is. 

The Post-Covid Office

Posted on by Bill Ryan

The knowledge economy office workplace got a sudden shake-up over the past year plus. At its peak, not that long ago, the pre-vaccinated office-based workforce (March 2020-March 2021) was functioning more from home than from the traditional office, approximately ten times more so than pre-pandemic rates. According to the University of Chicago, as recently as March 2021, 45% of work services were still being performed in home environments. 

This begs the question, is office work going to snap back to the way it was with workers committing to long hours away from family spent in bustling office buildings arrived at via thick commuting traffic? And if so, why? 

Whether or not the Covid pandemic has unwittingly ushered in a paradigm shift in how work is dispensed over the long term is yet to be determined. It will certainly be one of the interesting trends to observe over the next few years. At present, a look at some of the currently available, albeit sparse, indicators seem to show some degree of change in how work operations are conducted. And they may be with us for the foreseeable future. 

It is fair to assume most management desire a return to normal times, during which management practices they were accustomed to can be resumed. If there is to be a more permanent realignment to include more flexibility such as remote work activity it probably will not willingly come from supervisors. To dust off that old business expression from the 20th century, it will come from the rank and file. 

A Microsoft WorkLab report from earlier this year reveals some pertinent findings. Nearly three quarters of employees wish for an option to work remotely. Although remote work has its downsides, enough workers have experienced that productivity can still be maintained by way of technological means in a comfortable environment with less stress and less exhaustion. Demand for a more permanent flexible, distributive, blended, or hybrid production model has arisen among office employees, according to this report. 

Older Gen Z and younger Millennials form a cohort that may be informative here. Living and working from devices is second nature to them. It is reasonable to expect the momentum for more flexibility will come from them. If their resumes and LinkedIn profiles start showing more quantifiable accomplishments derived from working remotely, they will be communicating not only that they can do it, but that they want to be hired for positions honoring such skills. Balancing productivity with wellbeing in the modern era will only grow as a necessary calibration and younger workers are likely to show the way in the context of adaptable workstyles. 

Business need not be driven into this transformation kicking and screaming. Signs are emerging among C-levels showing a recognition of the likely changes to come. A Work Trend Index survey conducted by Edelman Data & Intelligence discloses that 66% of business leaders are contemplating refashioning office space to allow for more flexibility.  

Reasons are twofold. As implied earlier, the workforce appears to be increasingly desirable of workplace flexibility. This could likely become an incentive for luring needed talent not wanting to be bound by traditional institutional rules. 

Additionally, business is identifying some benefits as a result of the Covid-induced remote working experiment in terms of lower overhead, as reported by NPR, and increased productivity, as claimed by Harvard Business Review. 

It is likely multiple variations on a hybrid model will become established moving forward that incorporates combinations of conventional office-centric requirements with increased distributive or remote work options for employees.  

Although no one could have reasonably predicted that a congruence of modern communication technologies with a global pandemic would steer this trend, the result could ultimately be a boon for workers and their bosses. Let us hope employers give such changes serious consideration. 

Self-Awareness and Your Career

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Psychology plays a significant role in the development of our careers. It starts with identifying our work interests when we are young and expands over time to include interpersonal relations, self-motivation, passion for what we do, attitudes toward superiors, team cooperativeness, and many other job-related aspects. Perhaps most importantly psychology speaks to how constructive we are on the job and the way we manage our mental well-being and stress levels while on the road to productivity. 

Effective performance is dependent on how a worker feels at work. Safety, security, and freedom from harassment are basic. Beyond that, feeling appreciated and being prepared to work efficiently sets up an employee to be a valued contributor. Quality management can be instrumental in establishing and maintaining such workplace conditions. But realizing the benefits of positive psychology is not just the responsibility of management. The state of our psychology is ultimately up to each of us individually — in life as well as at work. 

Perhaps the key psychological quality determining how well we will flourish in our careers is self-awareness. Individuals with keen self-awareness possess a nearly full perception of their emotional makeup, potential, imperfections, requirements, and what energizes them. They are well equipped to capitalize on their strengths while managing their weaknesses. Self-aware professionals carry with them a quiet self-confidence based on honesty and realism knowing they do not have to fake it to make it. Their success results from a work product competently delivered, but not exceeding their capacity to perform effectively. They know what they know and “know” what they don’t know. 

Self-awareness need not be thought of as some metaphysical trait held by only a few anointed people. We all practice it to some degree. For example, if we know that too many scheduled meetings packed closely together stress us out, then we work to make sure the meetings during which we are expected to participate are spaced such that we can contribute optimally. 

If we get anxious when seeing our email inbox overflowing with superfluous messages, then we let our co-workers know to only send messages of significant importance. If we know our best work comes from meeting deadlines, then we structure our workflow such that tasks needing completion by a specific time are stacked accordingly. (You don’t have control about such conditions with your job? You may be in the wrong job.) 

An additional benefit of self-awareness is its extended usefulness to co-workers. The self-aware colleague is less likely to lash out in frustration or to make unreasonable demands of others. They have a leg up on assessing the capacity levels of their fellow associates and can sense how each best accomplishes their assignments. Team functioning and work yield are enhanced the more self-aware team members are. Self-aware coworkers and managers can serve as models, if not unofficial mentors, thereby improving the overall workforce. 

Self-awareness is internally cultivated over time. Developing this ability is largely linked to how reflective we each choose to be. Reflection is a chief component of critical thinking. As we refine our reflective skill, we find ourselves more adept in examining, analyzing, and assessing experiences, which better informs how we address future challenges. 

For some of us, building in time and effort to be reflective may need to be more intentional. If we observe that our default mode is to keep plowing through the details and minute-by-minute demands of our jobs without purposefully reflecting on what insights we can gain from the approaches we take, then we deny ourselves the richness that can come from reflection and by extension self-awareness. 

In short, self-awareness brings increased clarity to our work values and goals. Our decisions are improved and our objective of strengthening and deriving more satisfaction from our careers becomes more likely. 

Don’t worry. Very few of us have reached self-awareness nirvana. So, give yourself a break and start or continue to polish this aptitude wherever you are on the spectrum. 

Strengthening Knowledge Sharing Online

Posted on by Bill Ryan

The news is not that we are continually shifting most of our knowledge-economy work time online, but rather that we are learning more over time about what works and what does not work when doing so. Take the Training & Development (T&D) field. Here is an industry which experienced a head start long before Covid in providing digital and distance learning opportunities. By designing and preparing virtual and hybrid instruction programs for a relatively long period it is reasonable to expect there are lessons which can be derived by this industry informing other business sectors about how to disseminate intelligence in an online environment. 

Another area sharing distance learning, admittedly more than they want to currently, is the education arena in both K-12 and higher ed. Like T&D, their shared mission is to leverage the power and ubiquity of computers and similar devices, along with the public’s basic tech literacy abilities, to deliver teaching and learning possibilities when it is impractical to house students in traditional classrooms. Here too, best practices are being identified as teachers, schools, and communities face the challenge of providing quality education online. 

Together T&D and education are revealing methods and conditions to consider establishing when the online workplace involves information sharing, change management, customer engagement, and staff development. An analysis of peer-reviewed literature, the T&D/education marketplace, and anecdotal reports from distance learning practitioners suggest key practices when formulating and implementing remote instruction courses and programs. However, it is insightful to understand the finest of these procedures are not merely disjointed techniques produced through trial and error, but rather rest upon a philosophical foundation. 

Lev Vygotsky was a Soviet-era psychologist renowned worldwide to this day for his scholarship on how humans make meaning, in other words, cognitive development. His theory in short is that people acquire cultural values, beliefs, problem-solving strategies, and practical knowledge through collaboration with others, especially more knowledgeable people. Comprehension and meaning, according to Vygotsky, is derived in a social context, which makes community the fertile ground from which people learn. 

Today, Vygotsky’s theory compels developers of online educational and training curricula to migrate characteristics of in-person community to the digital environment. In doing so, instructors and trainers are better able to facilitate concept and knowledge acquisition among their students and trainees. 

We need therefore to trust in the interconnectivity and interplay possible through virtual contact. Although still a novel concept for older generations, society is clearly moving toward a norm characterized by remote connections with others, whether through our use of social media, FaceTime, or online short-term credentialing courses.  

Three ideal practices which take advantage of social cohesion include: 

Being Present – This can range from presenting direct instruction in a synchronous or live-time manner to being available for individual student/employee questions to mentoring. There will be occasions where asynchronous (non-live time) communication, such as message boards, forums, and course policies, need to be visible for all participants, but in general being directly available or on call during set hours leaves participants feeling less abandoned and insecure. 

Interactions – Encouraging participant interaction advances information sharing and social learning, which leads to literacy. Three key dialogues to learning involve teacher to student, student to student, and student to content. Promoting such exchanges generates effective growth-oriented connections among teachers and students; purposeful explorations conducted within a student-to-student context; and investigations between a student and the topic areas’ facts and concepts. 

Discussion – Promoting opportunities for students to participate in synchronous and asynchronous discussions creates substantial educational value. Encounters involving questions, reflections, responses, and decisions support participant growth. Thanks to digitization, well-structured discussions and deliberations can strengthen any course. 

When tasked with planning for distance training and teaching opportunities keep in mind the importance of generating social coherence. You may find less has been lost going virtual than you initially feared. 

Distributive Work Gets A Boost

Posted on by Bill Ryan

One of the significant consequences foisted upon the economy during the Covid-19 outbreak has been the rapid scaling of work completed outside of the office, i.e., at home. What is commonly known as remote work, now increasingly being referred to as distributive work, has been increasing over the past twenty years or so. But in its short history it never has experienced a shot of practice like it is getting now. 

My guess is that distributive work is conventionally thought of across most businesses as secondary in its productive impact relative to being onsite, not unlike the way online courses have tried shaking off their reputation of being course lite. However, the severity of social distancing to break the chain of virus transmission is forcing the knowledge economy to rely on high quality distributive work to stay alive as never before. Indeed, it is in the knowledge economy, comprised of smart and skilled workers producing goods and services worldwide, where distributive work holds its greatest promise. 

It may be useful to know the thoughts of someone who has pioneered and cultivated distributive work for years and is now a leading voice in the movement. Matt Mullenweg was one of the founding developers of WordPress, the digital content management system, and founder of the diversified internet company Automattic with ~1200 employees distributed over 70 countries. He continues to not only evangelize distributive work but leads a set of companies that practice it daily. 

He is also convinced distributive work need not be just an off-the-shelf option management reaches for during times of disruption, but a model of productivity capable of surpassing the performance of traditional office-setting work. 

Mullenweg promotes worker autonomy as key to motivation and efficiency and is much more concerned with worker output than input. While retaining some in-person collaboration, but in a much more reduced and targeted manner, he recognizes the impediments of cramming a lot of people onto a single site. A myriad of distractions such as office politics, intrusive co-workers and managers, long off-topic chats with co-workers, shared facilitates, a narrow set of expected in-house behaviors, and a feeling of having little control over likes and dislikes from the office temperature to the smell of someone’s lunch can all negatively factor into the worker feeling a lack of autonomy. 

With that in mind he identifies five levels of distributive work from low to high effectiveness. To quickly summarize: 

  • Level 1, which is now old-school, has workers using telephone and email offsite to augment their work, but with the belief that the “real” work is done at the office. 
  • Level 2 is an attempt to recreate the office elsewhere by use of VPN and conferencing software to supplement voice and email. Most business is still mired in levels 1 and 2. 
  • Level 3 demonstrates an intentional effort to adopt the best software and equipment available to share knowledge seamlessly and transparently across the organization. This can include good lighting, microphones, and communication tools like Zoom, Slack, and P2. 
  • Level 4 places a premium on asynchronous and written communication, meaning to move away from an over-reliance on live interactions. The goal here is to improve the quality of decision making even if its pace is slowed. 
  • Level 5 is where production capability is shown to be measurably improved over traditional work methods. 

Mullenweg contends the manufacturing factory model of all employees looking busy at the same time and in the same place does not always translate well into the cognitive economy. By valuing quantifiable and qualitative output primarily and providing workers with the means necessary to cooperatively join forces across distance the “workplace” can be not only redefined but rendered more fruitful. 

Looking for a humane and profitable opportunity amidst a global contagion may be difficult. Perhaps, refining distributive work is one such occasion. 

The Growth of Cognitive Careers

Posted on by Bill Ryan

Economies, and by extension careers, reward those human characteristics most in demand. When muscular strength was most in need during times dominated by agriculture and mechanical ability became required to operate and maintain machinery during the industrial age, those abilities were rewarded and revered leading to employment for those possessing such skills. 

The age we have now entered, particularly since the invention of the microprocessor, is one around which cognitive competency or intelligence is highly honored. High paying and stimulating jobs are increasingly going to the smartest among us and there is no end in sight of this trend. 

Historically, there has always been a need for intelligent people, but the correlation between cognitive ability and compensation was never as strong as it is today. One could have been an astute lawyer, financial planner, or mathematician at the turn of the 20th century, but the economy just did not reward those people at the levels that can be done today. We have created a much more complex economy requiring well-informed, inventive, and knowledgeable people who can navigate and derive value from what is for many of us a puzzling network of esoteric information in so many areas. The employment landscape for people with certain kinds of cognitive capacity is flourishing. 

For years we have heard about high unemployment rates and at the same time we have heard there is not enough talent to hire for hard to fill positions. The jobs that are vacant seek individuals with know-how in management, engineering, data analysis, and many other areas where information processing, creativity, and workforce resourcefulness is called for. 

Professionalism is deepening across fields that include medicine/healthcare, law, higher education, the sciences, the military, advanced manufacturing, and finance. Routine and relatively low-skilled operations will not bring competitive advantages to these career categories. Only accelerated thinking will. 

As a result, we are seeing the growth of an educated class. According to the U.S. Census Bureau only 4.6% of the U.S. population had attained bachelor’s degrees or higher in 1940. Today it is 32%. As this educated class continues to earn at relatively robust rates it appears to create an impression of inequality and disenfranchisement, such as we see being exploited in our current presidential election. 

However, meeting the cognitive demands of a more intricate and perplexing economy requires educated people. Blaming success is not enough to improve the lot of us all. Directing one’s individual energies to where the expertise is most needed will. 

The number of us prepared to optimally function in the globalized cognitive economy is not enough if we are to continue being among the world’s leaders in innovation, business, and social transformation. Without relatively easy access to higher education for those with the potential to take the most advantage of this opportunity means we all lose. Let us agree that lifelong learning is essential for each one of us and entry into a college experience that challenges and pushes us to maximize our cerebral capacity benefits us personally and collectively. 

However, the expense of higher education is too high and makes going to college prohibitive for too many Americans. The cost of college has risen too much and too fast. To put this cost hike into perspective the New York Times’ Economix blog shows that since 1985 the cost of general consumer items has jumped 200+%, gasoline prices have risen approximately 300%, and medical care 350%. But college tuition and fees — 575%! Are you kidding me? How is this in our best interests? This destructive level of inflation needs to be controlled. Our long-term economic development relies on it. 

Equality of opportunity is a virtue and should be the basis of much of our public policy. Opportunity is stifled when only the rich can afford to go to college. Opening the doors to higher education invites more participation in cognitive careers and expands the education class to more inclusiveness.