This one’s subtitled: An essay on learning (and trying not to drown).

Once upon a time, I decided I wanted to experience the excitement and anxiety of learning something new – the art of whitewater kayaking. Ever since my first rafting trip as a teenager, I knew I wanted to paddle my own boat. The kayakers looked like they were enjoying the river in ways that we on the large raft were unable. I told my buddy next to me that someday I wanted to do that. Someday. So, a few years ago, I decided to stop letting life get in the way of something I yearned to do. I signed up with a local kayaking school and set out to pursue a goal that I had put aside for too long.

However, the first course did not go quite the way I envisioned. I naïvely thought kayaking would be much easier than it actually was and that I would pick up the instruction much faster that I actually did. In reality, I felt awkward in the unstable boat and unnerved by my inability to master something that on dry land looked so easy.

Yet I walked away from that experience with three powerful lessons that offered insights into my own sense of learning and living.

Lesson #1: Just because you’ve been on a river before does not mean you already know what you’re doing. I’ve been rafting before in whitewater and even done some flatwater kayaking and I thought those experiences would give me an edge in quickly learning how to paddle a kayak. One mistake I made was that I didn’t approach this new experience from a place of “not knowing,” but instead tried to filter it through past experiences that may have gotten in the way of actually learning. Recognize each experience, regardless of how familiar it may be to you, as an opportunity to learn something new.

Lesson #2: Don’t be afraid to do something new because you might look like you don’t know what you’re doing. Guess what? More than likely, you don’t know what you’re doing! This means you might notice some uncomfortable feelings like incompetence and helplessness. About half-way through the lesson, I committed a typical newbie mistake of panicking when I accidentally capsized my kayak. Trapped underwater in my kayak, I thrashed and flailed trying to get my boat upright. Two instructors came to try to rescue me before I remembered that I could rescue myself by ejecting from the boat. When I surfaced and caught my breath, I realized that my classmates had witnessed the whole episode with a mixture of fear and thankfulness that it wasn’t them. Yet regardless of how I must have looked, I learned very quickly how to remain calm while underwater and how to get myself out of a capsized kayak. Remember that embarrassment only lasts for a few minutes, while the lessons you gain through trying something new last much longer.

Lesson #3: We’re all in-between swims. After I managed to get back in my kayak, one of the instructors said, “Even the best paddlers get themselves into jams. Dude, we’re all in-between swims.” As I rejoined my fellow kayakers, the full force of that statement hit me. Individuals who choose to fully experience life inevitably encounter challenging situations that are bigger than themselves. Sometimes we can paddle through the situation and sometimes we have to eject. It’s about not letting our fears get in the way of fully learning and living. Be open to not getting it right all the time and understand that failing can often lead to the greatest learnings of all.

So, are you taking tentative action in order to always remain upright in your boat or are you pushing yourself and allowing for the possibility of tipping over? The first option is one of safety, the second is risky, but one of true growth. If you’re playing it safe now because you’re afraid of capsizing, ask what it’s costing you. Maybe it’s a life of significance, meaning, and fun. Start paddling in your life and see where it takes you.

photo credit: davichi (via Flickr)

I found this clip of Jeff Jarvis via Johnnie Moore’s blog. Contained within it are some rather provocative ideas. A few of them are spot on (like how our educational system still operates as if it’s an industrial world). A few of them might be bullshit but I’m still debating internally.

The awesomeness comes in the form of how we interact with learning. So much of our training tells us that an A is better than a C, that a glowing performance evaluation trumps one with negative marks, that perfection looks smarter than blunders. And our training is completely wrong. As Jarvis notes, mistakes must be the goal, the object of the lesson. Life is a beta. It’s messy and complex and in constant flux. We’re never absolved of our responsibility to learn and improve.

What did sort of put a twist in my knickers were Jarvis’s arguments that all the good ideas are taken and that the best we can hope to achieve now is “curator” status. I get where he’s coming from: Why recreate the wheel when great content already exists? Creating content is about the ego and when we get in front of someone – regardless of whether its on stage, in a classroom, or on a blog – we do so in a quest for validation.

What seems to go unsaid is that the audience, student, and reader are merely passive participants of the process. That’s a mistaken assumption. Instead, we should think of content creation as an ever evolving mashup of ideas and personal experience. But maybe this is where Jarvis was trying to lead us. Maybe his idea of a curator is someone who is able to collect diverse information, mash it up, and recreate new knowledge.

What I don’t want to see is a tiered order where curators are relegated to second-class beneath the creators. In such a system, creators maintain their elite status and govern it through the power to release information and knowledge. Okay, so maybe that won’t happen like that but power is an interesting construct. Those who possess it don’t often give it up willingly. So who has power right now? And who will have it tomorrow?

There’s a rather lively conversation taking place at Olivier Blanchard’s The BrandBuilder blog about social media “certification” being promoted by the International Social Media Association (ISMA). I put certification in quotations because I question the very idea of whatever this organization is pushing as true certification. I’ve been on the professional association side of things and know how much work goes into developing a certification program, the standards and oversight needed to make it truly legitimate. (If you’re curious about what basics go into developing and maintaining a recognized certification program, here’s a terrific article from the American Society of Association Executives.) Once completing the program, you may receive a certificate, but it is not certification and there’s a huge difference. I understand the proposed value and rationale for a certification program as a ward against snake oil salesmen but based on the site’s info, I wonder about the true purpose of the ISMA’s program.

But lest I go into a more focused rant against ISMA, I actually want to address a tangential issue that arose from Olivier’s post. It has to do with the value of the diplomas and true certifications we earned. Think about the Bachelor’s and other post-graduate degrees you hold as well as the professional certifications necessary to practice your craft. Maybe it was an advanced engineering degree earned from a large university twenty years ago. Or perhaps it was a general liberal arts degree from a small college last year. What is it’s value to you today? If you’re thinking it has little or no value, I’d encourage you to think again. Even if you’re not actually using that degree today, I wager it has had some impact on the way you view the world.

My personal example (and yes, your mileage may vary) is that I went to a small liberal arts school and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in history. If you know my profile and background, you’ll notice that I haven’t spent any professional time working in museums, teaching history or any other historical-related efforts. Yet, what I learned through my history major has impacted how I view the world around me. I see cause-and-effect differently; I seek out root causes for incidents; I believe there are multiple viewpoints to explore for any event. So while I’m not a practicing historian, I do see and think about my world through the lens of a historian. And that is what adds to my unique value as a professional no matter what I choose to do in my career. Now I’m working on a Master’s degree in Business Anthropology and that further adds to my specialized approach to working with clients.

Try to think about that diploma differently. Don’t disregard or undervalue the learning that you’ve gathered over the years regardless of how detached it may seem to the work you’re doing right now. That academic learning coupled with your experiential learning makes you the unique and highly valuable professional you are today.

Are you doing something different in your career than your undergrad or post-grad prepared you for? More than likely you are…if so, how do you think your academic learning has influenced your professional work? Love to hear your own stories.

A little over a month ago, I was inspired by Alex, my business partner at BaileyHill Media, to start running again. Way (way, way) back in the day, I used to be fairly in shape. In college, I could run a decent eight minute mile but through the intervening years I stopped running regularly. Oh, I tried to pick it up again every so often, but I’d find an excuse to stop and let myself get out of shape again.

As with all men who find themselves getting older, we begin to see our friends cope with health issues and weight problems. And then we wake up one day, look in the mirror and say (or curse), “Oh crap, when did I start to get fat? And why I am tired so often? And why is my doctor (plus wife and parents) nagging my about my cholesterol?” For the longest time, I heard all of this from my internal voice but chose to ignore it.

So one day in early September, I decided it was time to stop ignoring my health and do something about it. I decided to commit to the Couch-to-5K running program which is tailor-made for my slug-like self and also downloaded the C25K app for my iPod Touch (which turns out to be the best $3-4 dollars I’ve ever spent on myself). And as the cherry-on-top, I learned a few things about persistence and motivation.

Learning #1: Starting out sucks, but it gets easier the longer you stick with it.
The first week, I was sucking wind after only running for a couple of minutes. By the time I got home, I was a sweaty, pained mess. I’m convinced the only thing that got me through it was a deep commitment to keeping with the program and seeing it to the end. Far too many times in the past, I’d figure out a way to shirk off an exercise program and never finish. But not this time…I had a burning desire to complete the C25k program. And then, I noticed that week two was a little easier even though the intensity of the run schedule increased. The burning in my legs and lungs was more manageable. It was similar for weeks three and four. I felt stronger and I discovered I enjoyed the way I felt after a good run.

Learning #2: Start small and accept small victories.
The C25K Program eases us couch potatoes into a running routine by starting with incredibly short runs mixed in with longer walks. Each session gradually builds up so that after roughly nine weeks on the program a slug like myself can plan to run a 5K. From the start, I gave myself lots of internal applause and praise for just making it through a run interval without stopping. Then, I’d do the same when I finished a week. And now that I’m up to running eight minute intervals, I continue to do a little celebration. The key is to not be stingy with the internal encouragement. Give yourself props for the small victories and the bigger ones will come naturally.

Learning #3: The right equipment means everything.
It doesn’t matter what you do in life, don’t skimp on your equipment. I started running again using the same shoes I bought at a running store in 2004(!). Hard to imagine why my knees hurt like hell those first couple of week, huh? If I was going to get serious about running again, I needed to visit a good running store (like RunTex here in Austin) and get fitted for quality shoes. Since then, I’m happy to say I’ve had zero knee pain.

Learning #4: Find a partner (or partners).
Partners can make everything easier and more rewarding in life. Like the partner I love and have been married to for nearly 15 years, Caroline. Like the partner I’m building a business with, Alex. For my running routine, I usually run alone but I still have a partner. His name is Ray Lewis and he’s a linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens. He’s a complete figment of my imagination, but when I need someone to help me push myself up a hill or finish off a long run interval, Ray is there. Why Ray? Because he’s intense and I can only imagine that if he was running with me, he’s be pushing me to move my ass. It’s sort of a “What Would Ray Shout?” kind of thing.

Learning #5: Goals are important.
I know, this one almost goes without saying. But I can’t tell you how much motivation I get during each run knowing that I’m working toward being able to race an official 5K in early November. It adds just a little more psychic nudge when I’m feeling like not finishing a run hard. This goal is also exciting because I have a couple of partners, Julie and Chris, who are going to run with me for this 5K race. And I’m also roping my father into running a 5K when he comes to visit me next spring.

Recently, I’ve come across some interesting thoughts on the nature and necessity of talent.

This morning, Zig Ziglar at Great Management asked Does talent always prevail? And the answer is, “No.” In his article, Zig tells the story of Peter Vidmar, Olympic gold medalist, and why he succeeded when other athletes were more talented. Here’s a quote from Vidmar’s coach:

Peter is not particularly talented. I’ve had boys who were more gifted physically, with more kinetic awareness, strength and flexibility. But Peter surpassed them all because of his singular determination.

Geoff Colvin wrote a book called Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else and argues a similar point. Here are a couple of quotes that underscore Zig’s thoughts on talent:

Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration. This is what makes it “deliberate,” as distinct from the mindless playing of scales or hitting of tennis balls that most people engage in. Continually seeking exactly those elements of performance that are unsatisfactory and then trying one’s hardest to make them better places enormous strains on anyone’s mental abilities. (p. 70)

If you believe that your performance is forever limited by your lack of a specific innate gift…, then there’s no chance at all that you will do the work. (But) If you believe that doing the right kind of work an overcome the problems, then you have at least a chance of moving on to ever better performance. What you really believe about the source of great performance thus becomes the foundation of all you will ever achieve. (p. 205)

What Zig and Geoff remind us to do is to not buy fully into the “Cult of Talent” that has taken root in our culture, the idea that if you weren’t born with a gift you’re out of luck. It actually doesn’t work like that. The reality is more liberating…and more challenging. It means that if we develop a habit of deliberate practice where we continually push ourselves, we can achieve more than we might otherwise believe. It doesn’t mean that innate talent is meaningless, it just means that it’s not everything.

Personally, where I struggle most is in trying to determine where to fully dedicate myself. My Renaissance Soulseems to rebel against the notion of selecting just one thing to dedicate my mental focus. I can’t claim to have a lot of answers to this question. How do you navigate the task of deciding where to place your dedication and create a deliberate practice plan? Love to hear your thoughts.

I’m back home in Austin and I took time on the flight to look back at my notes from yesterday’s Online Community Unconference 2009. So what did I learn?

Learning #1
Okay…this isn’t so much a new learning as it is a poignant reinforcement of something that I know. Acquaintances made online become closer friends when meeting offline (like with my friend Bill Jacobson). If you have a community that only meets in the online space, seriously consider how you can encourage offline meetups.

Learning #2
We’re creating and recreating social norms with every new community and new technology. The way we interact acceptably in one online community may be entirely inappropriate in another. For an example think about your interactions on LinkedIn versus Facebook. While it’s not universal, I wager that your interactions in Facebook are different than LinkedIn (okay, at least mine are). And the types of people you friend on Facebook are likely different, as well (again, not universal…your experience may differ). And all of this impacts how we form behaviors, attitudes, and actions in our communities, in addition to how create expectations of other members. For companies and organizations wanting to build communities, having a grasp of these norms is incredibly important. Thanks to @gammydodger for kicking off this strand of thought.)

Learning #3
Grappling with our various online personas is filled with anxiety. With so much of our lives existing online, there really isn’t a magic formula for determining what persona to use in a given moment. Do you create and use separate personas? Or do you find a way to balance a unified persona? What we do know is that there are pitfalls with either case. And what makes it even more difficult is that as new semantic search technologies arise, we may not have a choice about what parts of our online lives are open to viewing. What is certain is that if each of us doesn’t have a strategy for how we interact online through comments, photos, bloggings, twitterings, etc. we put ourselves in a tough spot. (Thanks to @davepeck and @chip_roberson for spurring this session.)

Learning #4
It is vitally important to separate the person from the action. This is closely related to Learning #2. If someone violates a norm, the desire to label them as a “troll” or similar does nothing but create a conflict. Why? Because there’s a part of us that equates trolls with evildoing (or at least someone doing bad) and then we take the next step of binding action to person. Instead, we need to make an effort to separate the individual from their action. Reach out to the offending individual, listen to their perspective, and seek to understand. It could be they didn’t know the community rules or tacit social norms. But if they continue to offend take steps to maintain the health of the community. (This learning came from Scott Moore’s info packed session on Social Psychology and Communities.)

This really doesn’t begin to cover everything, but I’ll put it up as a good start. I know that as I continue to reflect on yesterday’s unconference, more will percolate to the surface here.

Oh, and if you or your organization is serious about online community, you need to pencil in next year’s unconference. For me, it was worth every single penny I invested.

Managers, when it comes to your employees where does professional development rank in your list of priorities?

A. It’s vitally important and I discuss it frequently
B. It’s important but don’t talk about it much
C. It’s not important – or – there are more important things to focus on

If you answered ‘A’ above…congratulations! Keep on doing what you’re doing. However, for all you folks who answered ‘B’ or ‘C’, let’s have a friendly chat, okay? I won’t lay a guilt trip on you (okay…try not to) and I promise by the end you’ll come away with a new appreciation for why growing your employees is important.

When I work with managers, I often hear four common reasons for why professional development gets pushed to the backburner:

Good Ol’ Fashion Fear of Change
Perhaps the greatest fear expressed is that if you grow someone, you’ll grow them right off your team or out of your organization. That might just be true. When people grow as professionals, they do change…and change can bring fear. In this case, it’s the fear of changes in the environment. There might also be a fear that if the employee leaves you just paid for growth that will benefit another organization and not your own.

So, what if you grow an employee and they leave? As Jamie Notter once pointed out, think of it this way: what if you don’t grow them and they stay?

What you can do: It’s time to confront this fear and realize that professionals must hone themselves or else they become dull and rather useless. If the employee stays, they’ll be far more useful to your organization’s purpose. Yet if the employee leaves, you can still take pride in the fact that you helped them move on to something important. And here’s an often ignored bonus: you now have a potentially new social link to another organization in order to share ideas and experiences.

Not Enough Time or Resources
This usually follows with, “When things settle down and get less crazy, then I’ll be able to give more focus to professional development.” Here’s the problem with that statement: it’s never going to get less crazy than it is now. If anything, it’s just going to get crazier.

What you can do: Stop finding reasons for not making disciplined time or resources available around professional development for your people. If time is the reason, create ways for your employees to make time (e.g., move some lower priority tasks off their plate to make room for professional development). If resources are the reason, it’s time to evaluate where you spend your money. If you don’t see professional development as an investment in your company’s future success, there may be something there to reflect on further.

We Have Bigger Problems to Solve Right Now
See above. Again, it comes down to priorities. Also, ask yourself this: Would growing the skills, experiences, and knowledge of our employees help us solve this problems more effectively?

It’s the Employee’s Responsibility
Managers, if this is your belief we need to work on changing that now. Here’s a simple question: what is your role in your organization? Take a few minutes to reflect on this. Hopefully, somewhere in your response, the word lead appeared. If you are a leader, know that a key responsibility of leaders is to produce more leaders. That takes a firm belief in the value of growing your employees.

What you can do: Assume the responsibility for growing your people. Yes, it’s the employee’s responsibility to be open and eager to achieve their own development (it’s the old horse and water thing). Yet, you must create these professional development openings and then create the space for your employees to use what they’ve learned. Going back to the first issue around the fear of employees leaving…if an employee has the ability to grow and use this new growth in their work, they’ll likely be far happier and fulfilled in what they do.

Remember managers…if your employees look good, then you’re going to look good. The manager/employee dynamic can be a mutually beneficial relationship…particularly if you take care of your employees and their need for professional development.

Steve Roesler published a great post (then again, has he ever written a bad post?) titled Talent: Accurate Self-Awareness or Karaoke Feedback?. The main focus is feedback and he offers suggestions on how to give it as well as how to receive it.

For me, I find the hardest thing to remember about feedback is that it is a gift. Yes, sometimes that gift is like receiving tube socks for Christmas but every so often I get the kind of feedback that is right up there with receiving a first edition signed copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Feedback is learning and I have to remind my ego that learning is good if I want to grow (it helps to talk to my ego like it’s a five year old).

It also helps to frame the experience of receiving feedback in this way. Steve notes:

And remember: Feedback is more indicative of the person giving it to you than of you yourself. It tells you what’s important to them, reflects underlying values and expectations, and reveals ‘how you measure up’ in their eyes.

It’s a terrific post and made even more so by the addition of Wally Bock’s comment where he tells the story of how his father, a Lutheran pastor, asked for and received feedback from his family after each service and sermon. His experience offers additional elements that are vital in making feedback the powerful learning tool that it can be.

How are you practicing good feedback to those around you?
Are you asking for candid feedback and taking notes?

As I vaguely mentioned in my last post, after a few months of hustling to get all of my application items together, I’ve finally been accepted to the business anthropology master’s degree program at the University of North Texas. Along with my background in workplace coaching, organizational management, and leadership development, I’m excited at the prospect of adding an applied anthropology discipline to my portfolio (shoot me an email if you’re curious about what business anthropology is). My program is almost entirely online so it will be interesting to experience this type of learning and how different it might be from the traditional classroom experience.

But now comes the dawning realization that this program actually costs money (who knew?). Once upon a time I worked for a non-profit that offered a pretty sweet tuition reimbursement package in their benefits. The only condition was that you had to have a B grade or better in each class to be eligible for the reimbursement. Interestingly, the program didn’t necessarily have to be aligned with your job role (which is also rather rare). So, for instance, if you were in customer service and wanted to earn a degree in accounting, you were free to pursue that path.

I’m beginning to realize just how uncommon tuition reimbursement is in today’s organizations. Perhaps it’s always been this way or just a reflection of the current economy. Maybe you’re facing the same situation: you’re an employee planning on going back to school or a manager with staff who are interested in pursuing an advanced degree of some type…but your organization doesn’t have a tuition reimbursement or assistance program. While the financial aid is a nice benefit, there are some other ways to support academic learning in your organization:

Executive sponsorship
Think of this as an academic adviser within your organization. Each program typically assigns a faculty member to help students align their courses and learning with their professional direction. Well, apply that same type of role within your organization. Ask a senior manager or seasoned professional within your organization to be a mentor. This sponsor would ideally be someone who has the background, experience, and network related to the student’s field of study. Their purpose would be to offer insight and help connect the classroom study to the day-to-day world of work.

Workplace Learning Cohort
If you work in a big enough organization, there will likely be others pursuing a degree along with you. Why not develop a learning cohort and pull all the students together? The cohort doesn’t have to be grouped according to field of study – unless it makes particular sense to gather all the MBAs together. But, there is a strong possibility for additional learning if the group is a collective from multiple disciplines. If for no other reason to form, the cohort can be a support group for balancing the demands of work, school, and home lives.

Mini-Internships and Work Integration Options
Unless your ultimate goal is to be the prince of an ivory tower, you’re probably going back to school in order to advance your professional goals. And there’s nothing more frustrating to get all of this academic learning with no application to the real world of work. There needs to be a balance between theory and application. If your degree is directly aligned with your current work, then talk with your executive sponsor or immediate manager about how you can best integrate your academic work with your daily professional work. If your degree is not aligned with what you do daily, make a case for a mini-internship in another department (or at another organization if you can make a convincing argument). Just be prepared to show how your current work assignments won’t suffer and that the mini-internship will make you more valuable to your manager, team, and company.

The big idea is to be creative in how you integrate your professional development and your work even if there are no established programs in your organization. Anyone have other ideas or programs they’ve run across for how companies can support the learners in their workplace?

Steve Roesler applied the tag to me last week for a book reading meme. I’m kind of a sucker for anything book related so here she goes… 

The object of this meme’s game is to share what I’m currently reading and sentences 6-8 of page 123 of that book. I’m actually reading three books right now, two of them contributing to my professional learning: Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting and Pamela Skilling’s soon-to-be-released Escape from Corporate America. Here’s the page 123 snippet from Pamela’s work:

However, it is the immediate manager you work with every day who makes the biggest impact on your job satisfaction. Great companies cultivate great managers. They also give them the tools and the autonomy to lead their teams effectively.

What else is currently in the queue? Here’s my bookpile in the order I plan to read:

The Halo Effect – Phil Rosenzweig
Weird Ideas That Work – Robert Sutton
Get Back in the Box – Douglas Rushkoff
Excellence by Design – Turid H Horgan, Michael L Joroff, William L Porter, & Donald A Schon
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There – Marshall Goldsmith

Dang…that’s a bit of a load and I’m not at all sure that I’ll get through all of these books by the end of the summer. The problem for me is that I’m the king tortoise of reading…I read reeeeaaaal slllllooooow. And I’m also starting my Master’s degree in Business Anthropology in July so there are no guarantees. Honestly, I imagine there will be course prescribed reading that will trump my bookshelf selections. 

So, who’s next? I’m curious to see what kind of book reading projects on are on the minds of…

Jenny Ward
Pamela Skillings
Judi Sohn
Jason Alba
Frank Martin