DIY learning

While a global pandemic may have put a stop to many things, our need for learning hasn’t stopped. 

It’s increased!

Even though company budgets have been paused or slashed, we still have a need to learn so we can
🌕 cope with new situations, 
🌕 take on different responsibilities and 
🌕 adapt to new environments. 

If your client or employer has put a pause on learning, what could you do for yourself to keep your development active? 

Podcasts, books, webinars, masterclasses: so much more has become available in these times. 

We have a HUGE opportunity to DIY or design our own learning plan and program. 

Small investments at this time can reap us some mighty big returns in confidence, capability and skills ... which convert into greater career opportunities for what’s ahead. 

Start now on the DIY project that’s your own learning.

Strange times call for new ideas

When the Institute for the Future called out ‘novel and adaptive thinking’ as one of those skills we’d need right about now ... do ya think they knew just how much we’d need it?

The use of the word ‘novel’ may have become a little tainted (you know, the novel coronavirus and all).

So could we say unique? Or clever? 

The thing is, these strange times call for new and quite different ideas. 

We know the clichéd group brainstorming thing doesn’t work. 

We’re better off keeping an ideas book, capturing flashes of brilliance as they arrive. 

Or getting hands-on with an idea and prototyping it, to see how well it actually works. Although getting as practical as we can as soon as we can is a totally new concept for some people. 

- Part of a team? 
Know how to bring your clever. 

- Leading a team?
Know how to bring the clever out in others. 

- Running your own show? 
Look for opportunities to use your clever .... anywhere, any time. 

Almost anything goes!

These strange times need our unusual ideas and thinking. Be braver about that. 

Hold on the judgement that what you’re thinking isn’t ‘good enough’. 

We won’t know the value of an idea ... until it’s put into practice anyway. 

How adaptable we are

Some of us like to do the same things the same way. It’s easy. It’s familiar. It’s safe.

Others don’t mind a change ... they think it’s as good as a holiday! A little bit of difference or newness keeps things interesting. But then happily slip back to the world of sameness for safety.

Still others welcome difference, newness, change and evolution. All the time. It allows adventure, improvisation and ingenuity. It stretches us and we learn. We have new experiences and the challenge ... of a challenge.


How would you rate yourself?

Are you really up for change and being adaptable for new ways of thinking and doing things?

Or are you hanging on to sameness for security and safety?

This isn’t just little change like a new outfit or restaurant.

How the world is changing is requiring us to change. And some of us don’t want to change.

Rate yourself, again. Where does the arrow point to for you?

Applause to the synthesizers

To those who make sense of mess.

Who connect the dots and help us understand what’s going on. 

To those who just look at a spreadsheet and know what’s going on. 

Who can succinctly summarize the outcomes of a meeting, the key points of a presentation, the plot of a film. 

We applaud you. We so need you. 

You work out what the key pieces are and deliver them to us with clarity, precision and brevity. 

You cut to the chase, get to the point, and bring things together so we can move things along. 

Your way of distilling and reducing, integrating without losing meaning and holding the important bits together is needed. 

In all of the information, you find a way through so we can follow. 

And then together we can decide and act, putting ideas into practice. 

To the synthesisers who comb through complexity and are able to bring a lot of information together in one piece, thank you. 

Please keep doing what you do. 

Look around and listen out for the synthesisers who help bring disparate pieces of information together, help build understanding and help make collaboration easier ... thank you. 

Know a great synthesiser? Get in contact with them and say thank you. 

What kind of uncertainty

If these are “uncertain times” for us, think about what kind of uncertainty is it for you. Uncertainty couldn’t be a blanket cover, one type or one size fits all ... could it?

It’s worth exploring uncertainty further so we aren’t just generalizing about it.

There is:

Uncertainty that is confusion.

Uncertainty that is lack of knowledge.

Uncertainty that is indecision.

Uncertainty that is doubt.

Uncertainty from not knowing or being unsure.

Uncertainty that is variability.

Or the ‘subject to change’ type of uncertainty.

Much gets gathered under the one label of uncertainty ...but getting greater fidelity could help. In meetings, conversations, presentations and packs of information, go a way further than listing the U of VUCA as a generic brand of uncertainty.

Go further to get more certain about uncertainty! 🤩 You’ll be known for greater clarity and help guide a team through doing better work.