We need to learn quickly to keep up with the massive change around us so we don't get run over. We need to outrun change.
“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.”
–Antony Jay, British writer, broadcaster, director and actor
I’m planning to use that quote in several posts I want to write soon, so I will put it here to have it on the table.
(cross-post from my other blog, Nonprofit Update with minor changes.)
August 29th marked the 2 year blogiversary of my blog Nonprofit Update, which talks about nonprofit issues. I split off posts of interest to CPAs to this blog (Attestation Update) on October 14, 2010 and started this blog, Outrun Change , on October 3, 2011.
Nonprofit Update is my lead blog and I consider its start to be the birth of all three blogs. So, this is also the blogiversary of Outrun change .
Thanks so much to those who have stopped by. I hope it has been a blessing to you. In case you can’t tell, I’ve been having a blast.
Most visitors and page views are coming in from internet search engines. That is really cool.
One of the best things in the last year is a growing number of people interested enough is my musings to follow by e-mail or Google RSS feed. Thanks very much for stopping by.
For the second year, I will report some stats for my sites. Here’s some stuff for those interested in such things. I will adjust this time around to an August 31 cutoff instead of the 29th. I’ll list stats for this year with the prior year in parentheses.
I’ll provide this data for two reasons. First, to let those who may be interested in blogging see what data looks like for a really small blogger. Second, since I am active on three sites with different topics, it provides a test bed to see what different sites may look like for different blogs from the same author.
I had a great time watching the LeaderCast. After going through my notes a couple of times, wish I’d sent the above tweets. I have a few more here and here.
I have much more to say after hearing Dr. Fryer. See previous post Waste.
Waste upsets me.
A speaker at the 2012 Chick-fil-A LeaderCast led me to write this post.
Consider:
Since I am even less trendy than John Bredehoft, I wasn’t aware of this funny line that is making the rounds until he called attention to it in his post, 430 BC and 2012 AD – remarkable parallels, or coincidence?
Greece is collapsing,
Iranians are getting aggressive
& Rome is in disarray.
Welcome back to 430 BC!
Continue reading “The more things change, the more they stay the same as 2,442 years ago”
Mark Schaefer has a great post at {grow} listing three careers that will be in high demand at companies living in the social media space. I think those ideas translates into skills we will all need to work on – Three careers that will dominate social media (and it’s not what you think)
Continue reading “Three skills for living in a social media world”
J., an anonymous blogger at AidSpeak, has a post talking through the tensions of military people taking on humanitarian work, which puts them into the place where civilian aid workers have been for a long time – Humanitarian Space (the final frontier).
Having uniformed, armed soldiers doing the same thing that aid workers do blurs the distinction between those whose primary job is building things up (aid workers) and those whose primary job is blowing things up (soldiers).
That creates confusion for everyone involved especially those on the receiving end of humanitarian aid who watched things get blown up.
J.’s post is dealing with the realization that various militaries probably won’t be dropping their humanitarian aid work anytime soon. That means it will be important for the aid community to figure out how to work with and deal with the military community.
Continue reading “Grappling with change – another sector talks about their environment”
(cross-post from my other blog, Attestation Update, with a few changes for broader application.)
That’s a key idea from Bill Sheridan’s blog post, Learn. Share. Repeat from the Maryland Association of CPAs. His comments apply directly to all knowledge workers.
Knowledge workers need to have a lot of knowledge. And a broad base of information. And the wisdom how to use that knowledge.
We get paid for what we know! Cool!
Continue reading “Knowledge workers get to learn for a living!”
Those would be the Victims, Nonbelievers and Know-It-Alls, according to G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louse Viton, in their Businessweek article, Three Types of People to Fire Immediately.
Those types of staff will slow you down, block innovation, and discourage the rest of your team.
Continue reading “What three types of people should you fire tomorrow morning?”
A few weeks ago I attended the Dave Ramsey Live! event in Long Beach.
He had some cool things to say about change. I will give loose quotes and then expand his ideas.
Some people stay in jobs they hate because they hate change more than they hate their jobs.
The fear of change can be so great that you’re locked into a horrible situation. Continue reading “Some change management ideas”
Previous post gave a big-word description of how work is changing. Megan McArdle extends Mr Kling’s concepts in her post, The New New New Economy.
She paints two alternative paths as a choice between risk and being an assembly line drone when she says: Continue reading “Simple illustration of how work is changing”
The nature of work is changing. Radically.
Here are two fancy ways of describing the change that is taking place all around us along with my simple explanation.
Arnold Kling says this in his post, The Job-Seeker’s Paradox: Continue reading “A big-word description of how work is changing”
The radical changes in the work world, which are very real today, are going to require constant upgrades to our skills.
The 9-10-11 edition of The Economist had a series of articles on the changing work environment. One article in particular, My big fat career, discusses the changes already underway.
One particular author, Lynda Gratton from the London Business School, suggests you will need to acquire a new skill or expertise every few years. Continuous learning in other words.
If we are going to adapt to this rapidly changing world, we are going to have to be constantly learning. Always picking up new ideas. Continuously gaining new skills and knowledge.
The alternative is to get locked in time.
Continue reading “Locked in time or Continuous learning? Your choice.”
The world of work has changed. We are all free agents.
Even if we don’t change jobs or stay with one employer for decades, we are all now free agents.
That will be the theme of a series of posts. Probably the theme for a new blog, since those discussions will wander far away from issues of immediate interest to the nonprofit community.
What has happened?
The nature of work has changed.