Category: Work life
September 20th, 2013 by matthias
The day before yesterday, I was in a great hurry on my way to visit a very ill friend. Writing this a day later, I was successful in my race against time. Now this was a bit personal, but I will stay true to what my blog is about – things I’ve learnt recently – often in the context of the ways technology impacts on our lives. So please bear with me in spite of me opening up so dramatically. Also, there is a nice little story at the end of this post, so please read on.
I received note recently that an old friend from Germany was terminally ill – and I promised I would visit. I was at a conference yesterday – the national destinations of leavers of higher education conference in Huddersfield. I think I would have enjoyed it, had I not received terrible news right at the moment when the first speaker started. Now here’s where technology impacted me right away: I always live tweet from events like this, so I’m the annoying kid in the audience juggling two tablets and a laptop. Yes, I can multi-task. However, that day it was a blessing as well as a curse, as I received an email telling me to come as soon as possible.
Now the idea of this always connected world, where I am only a few hours away from my hometown in Germany, was tested: I started right away to affirm whether it would be possible to organise a flight (the next day was feasible), get the next few days off work (a big big thank you to all my colleagues who will keep the ship on its course – and my dean, who kindly gave me permission), book the flight, organise transport to and from airports, and inform other old friends who didn’t know.
All this was done within a few hours, and without me moving from my seat at the conference. Yes, I was the annoying kid with the two tablets and a laptop buying tickets and sending emails and Facebook messages – and some people may have thought me rude. But it actually helped that I wasn’t alone, and that I could follow what was happening – keeping my mind busy in between messages was both therapeutic as well as informative (it’s funny how your professional identity kicks in, even though you’re in emotional turmoil). I apologised to the people I knew there that I had a crisis to manage, and therefore wasn’t my usual self – and they were fabulous about it.
It’s often said that technology isolates us, and yes, that is a danger. However, in a world without mobile phones and internet, I would have never known about this in time – and though I couldn’t guarantee that I would make it in time, I was able to make an attempt – successfully as it turned out. I am thankful for living in such a connected world in which that is possible, and I know I can’t ask for more.
I promised you a glimmer of hope earlier: here it is. It’s small, but that’s what a glimmer is. As readers of this blog you will know that I am keen on not taking part in the collective demonising of young people as hapless and ‘not ready for employment’. So, on the way back from the conference, I was sitting on a local train with a some other participants. We were surrounded by school kids, A-level, as it turned out. At one point, one of them, a girl, maybe 16, turned to me – seeing that I am a suit, and asked me what I would ask a candidate in an interview – as she had one over the phone that very afternoon for a retail job. Little did she know that she was surrounded by careers professionals, so I gave her, and her assembled friends, an impromptu workshop on phone interviews. I told her that it was good that she showed initiative and approachability, and we talked through her previous retail experience. I advised her to use her mobile phone for some more research on what her potential employer is looking for in applicants, and we worked out a short introduction and motivation story for why she was applying to this specific employer.
It was nice on a number of fronts: it felt good to help someone on a challenging day like this, and she and her friends seemed interested and open to learn. I don’t work in schools, but I have to say that most of the school kids I’ve met in the last few years were all wide awake, had a hopeful outlook and were curious for what lies ahead of them. Again some more, albeit anecdotal, evidence against the image of what is being often labelled a feckless generation. If that shouldn’t make us feel hopeful, then I don’t know what should.
Posted in Social Media, Work life
May 20th, 2013 by matthias
Have you ever been frustrated with your manager for being slow with implementing what you had identified as mission critical and needed to be done right now? Was he sitting there, listening, apparently attentive, maybe even looking caring – but then nothing happened, at least not … well, right now? Well, this manager is me now. This is a realisation I had when participating in an excellent session by Gill Frigerio (@gillfrigerio) at the #PlaceNet13 conference (quick note: I chaired it – but can’t claim ownership of any epiphanies): Gill was doing an exercise with the assembled placement professionals, showing us a simple self-coaching exercise – and by golly, I learnt quite the lesson. I’ve been feeling stressed recently, and it wasn’t the volume of work, but a clear inability to let decisions and actions flow as I used to. Over the last years, moving up in organisations, I’ve gained a lot of responsibilities – but hilariously not necessarily more power to take them on in a swift and uncomplicated way. No wonder managers have a reputation for being ineffective. I always worked on the magic assumption that both would somehow go together, once I’m successfully climbing the chain of command. It was always my line manager, or people higher up the chain, with whom decisions would be stuck, I felt. All they needed to do was use their powers and unstick them – they said they agreed, but why did everything take so long? Once I’d be in their role, I’d just do stuff. It turns out that gaining responsibility and power don’t go along with each other at all, or at least at the same speed – and that exerting power isn’t the answer to getting stuff done sustainably either. The higher you move and the more you know about the organisation, the more you see complexities and consequences – and that almost always a strategic approach is required to solve issues rather than merely a tactical one. There are no quick wins (I was never a fan) – most of them end being rather pyrrhic. And using power to push something through tends to work against your agenda in the longer term.
The great philosopher Peter Parker (aka Spiderman) has termed the iconic words ‘With great power comes great responsibility . I jokingly often changed that into ‘with no power comes great responsibility’ for my workplaces – not knowing how right I was all along: ‘Moving up’, does not go with more power, or the ability to move things along – it’s mostly responsibility and perspective that you gain. It merely gives you access to others who may help you move things along – but they are mostly busy with their own strategic objectives (and often you can only hope that they align). Of course this depends on the type of organisation, but the reach of a manager in academia is astonishingly narrow: not that you can’t make decisions (I’ve pretty much always had that in most my jobs), but you simply can’t push them through – as you’re surrounded by people with similar reach, but no power either.
So far so frustrating, but why does this make me feel better? Any lesson like this would be worthless if it didn’t come with a call to change the agenda, to make it happen (whatever it is). Now what’s not going to happen is that I miraculously turn into some managerial super hero (even though I just got the shiny crystal trophy of my employer’s directorate leadership & management award) – as still I have gained no additional powers. Not even the strategy (often a word for just writing down your agenda, as if it makes it suddenly more real) will change that much – what I can however change are the tactics which I apply to achieve them. And for that, I have a couple of ideas (but mostly attitude), thanks to what I’ve learnt recently. Thanks, Gill.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/IKmQW7JTb6s]
Posted in Work life Tagged with: coaching, management, never give up, PlaceNet, responsibility, spiderman, stress, The power of giving up
April 16th, 2013 by matthias
I know I’m late to the party bemoaning the looming demise of Google Reader. To me, the world is full of people, who ‘get’ RSS feeds (and who therefore stay informed), and the many who don’t (and thus leading poorer lives for it). So much for the patronising comment of the week, but for me, as for many others Google Reader’s farewell is life changing, while for (apparently too) many others, it’s ‘Google what?’. I decided to move on swiftly emotionally (it’s not ‘our’ product after all), and service-wise, slowly: yes, I’ve got Feedly, Flipboard and Pulse accounts, but I don’t like their flashy graphic interfaces – those who’ve been to my office (or my home) know that I consider accessories and beautiful things – at times this included furniture – frilly and exuberant. So far then, no alternative service has made me open any other apps regularly during my daily commute. With one exception: as some of you may have noticed, I’m far more active on my WordPress blog than usual. WordPress has this Reader function, which so far I’ve ignored, as I had, well Google Reader and Twitter – but it does drag me in surprisingly often now, as it enables me to read many of my usual blogs (RSS feed style), and both gives me an opportunity to support them by ‘liking’ them (Facebook style) – and also share their content by ‘re-blogging’ (Twitter style). It’s GUI is clean (even the web version), and it invites me to blog more. What’s not to like? WordPress coming out as a contender for my reading needs was completely unexpected, and a bit like my countr(ies) getting more than nil points in the upcoming Eurovision song contest, but hey, this is one I’ll be playing with for a while.
Posted in Social Media, Work life
January 9th, 2013 by matthias
I feel a bit rusty after this Christmas break, but hee we go: For a while, I’ve been endeavouring to develop skills that many of us have either never learnt, but that our grandparents knew how to do on a regular, often casual basis. Whether it’s baking bread, learning basic brick building, or pork butchery – I’ve even been accused of being a bit of a ‘prepper’. It’s not that I’m preparing for the end of civilisation via the inevitable zombie apocalypse, but an honest interest in a more sustainable, and enjoyable, less consumerist life-style – and the key to that is to develop skills from less technology dependent times. I like to eat, therefore I should know how to cook, therefore I should know how food is made – or even better, grow and make it myself. At the same time, I try to live firmly in the 21st century: I hold my data in the cloud, use social networks daily, strive for hardware independence, am online every waking minute, and believe in a paperless office (and pretty much succeed with it). It’s nothing I learnt recently (and therefore not yet this week’s lesson) – I seemingly am a man of many contradictions, striving to live somewhere in that imaginary space between The Good Life and The Big Bang Theory. What I’ve learnt though is that it’s not really contradictory to me – but in sync with my pursuit of completeness: technology is a tool for me, and it’s vital to understand and utilise it fully to navigate in a modern world (of work). For me it’s really about developing skills that prepare you for life (an not only the zombie apocalypse): digital literacy is really an extension of … literacy. The former without the latter doesn’t make sense. I think my lesson is that buying bread is pointless to me, if I don’t understand how it’s made – and that I can replicate it. It’s the same impulse that motivates learning such seemingly contradictory skill sets. Knowing you basics will ultimately limit your ability to deal with the more complex (see my recent reblog on touch typing).
Posted in Work life
September 17th, 2012 by matthias
One thing I’ve taken a way from last week’s blog entry is that my online presence is fairly complex. I run three blogs – in two languages, and to three very distinct audiences. I tweet from mainly two Twitter accounts, and keep a presence on a number of LinkedIn groups. Not to mention Facebook. When I hold seminars on social media, I’m often confronted with ‘I don’t have time for all this – I’ve got enough emails to take care of as it is…’. I agree – and yet I don’t. First of all, I have learnt that my social media interactions help me reduce my email traffic – both at work and privately. In order to achieve that, I have deactivated pretty much all email notifications and newsletters on any service. My view is that email as a mode of communication is being pushed back – I’m sure I’ll find an infographic on that – and it is being replaced by more interactive social media channels. I know that pretty much every service you sign up for has the ‘send me updates via email’ setting on ‘yes’ as a default. I think this is unnecessary – I either engage with a service, which I pretty much do in that time on the train, or I don’t. But then I cancel it. I don’t need to know that someone has sent me a message on LinkedIn, because I check LinkedIn every day. In order to stay up-to-date, I follow hundreds of RSS feeds, which do not impact on my email load. What I have learnt is that the cleaner my inbox is, the more I can focus on the tasks it contains. At work, we have a brilliant initiative run by one of our senior academics and a learning technologist – they run something they call ‘tricks of the trade’ – check #rctott, lunchtime sessions which help academics use technology more effectively. I’ve held sessions there on email management, and I tend to parade around my lean inbox at these sessions. And the one piece of advice I want everyone to take away is – if my daily updates annoy you, put me on silent; stop all your alerts, check the service itself rather than getting the pile of 10 updates a day on stuff you are not reading up anyway. It works like magic for me, and I’ve learnt that email does not have to be the bane of my life.
Posted in Work life
September 10th, 2012 by matthias
I am an intensely private person – no, seriously; while I know that I share my views and comments daily in a professional capacity via a Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn, I have always drawn a strict line between my work life and my private life. It may be cultural – as the German saying goes ‘Dienst ist Dienst, und Schnaps ist Schnaps’, denoting the separation of work and play – or just personal preference, but I have always made a strong separation, even down to changing into different clothing at the workplace, thus marking the transition from the private to the work identity. And in a world with stationary computers and landline telephones that used to be an easily achievable thing. When mobile phones came in, it got significantly harder for many of us to ‘switch off’ the office. I’ve managed to escape that by practicing a fairly consistent hardware separation, leaving each or the other mostly untouched in the times allocated to my different identities. My learning experience is though that over the last year I’ve developed what I call a third identity – combining aspects of the private and the work one; I’ve come to call that my professional identity. I know it sounds still work-ish, but it clearly goes beyond that. I think it’s grounded in being trained as an academic, only taking on the manager role in my early thirties – I have an inherent interest in my field beyond the working hours and demands of the day. An academic is not only an academic when they lecture, or are ‘research active’ – it is part of the job to be interested and pursuing knowledge outside their office hours. And those are often the most productive. And that’s my lesson – my professional identity influences both my private and my work one; it’s the most fragile, but the most creative of them all, and it lives from the freedom to think and inspire the others. To stick with the title of this blog – the man behind the curtain is my private identity, the image of the wizard is the one at work – and the feet you see sticking out from beneath the curtain is my professional identity on which both depend.
Posted in Work life
June 6th, 2012 by matthias
In the last few weeks, I’ve spent some time looking at apps and browser extensions which help job seekers and professional networkers. And I was particularly impressed with the following ones: www.huntsy.com helps you structure your job hunt by uploading adverts and managing them; a bit basic to start with, but with LinkedIn integration this should be useful. Just waiting for the android app now… The smartr addressbook by www.xobni.com pulls social media profiles of your gmail contacts into a panel – it’s a bit scary what it all finds, but if you’re serious about networking, this is it. I’m thinking about signing my team up for this one. www.whoworks.at is a simple widget that helps you find out ‘who works at’ any website you visit, by finding LinkedIn profiles of staff – works like a charm in Chrome. But my favourite is www.ifttt.com – not a job hunting tool in itself, but a mighty page for web automation which does all sorts of odd jobs for you in the background, such as Twitter updates, automated responses and notes to www.evernote.com, etc. – except blog writing of course. This is just a quick roundup, I’ll keep assessing these tools, and may give each one of them a short paragraph in keeping with this blog’s mission.
Posted in Work life
March 29th, 2012 by matthias
Just read an interesting article ‘Why External Hires Get Paid More, and Perform Worse, than Internal Staff – Knowledge@Wharton http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2961#.T3P_YngZatd.twitter‘ It’s less of a learning experience than confirming a conviction that I’ve had for a long time – it pays off for organisations to promote and develop their internal staff. My reasoning so far has always been that training up and helping internals ease into the micro-culture of their new role is much quicker and cost effective, and that it fosters loyalty. Having had the experience to have to job hop to progress – as the article states a typical feature of higher education organisations – I would have very much preferred getting the recognition internally and progressing myself at my places of work, which I have generally felt both loyalty and affection for. With the general trend among many organisations to make the employee responsible for their career progression rather than leading them through a structured career plan, I think many employers are indeed missing a trick – rewarding and developing internal talent is a cost-effective way to create loyal employees and an efficient and effective workforce.
Posted in Work life
March 22nd, 2012 by matthias
Yes, they really do. This may sound a bit silly, but it’s a thing that is hard for me personally to follow. I see myself as fairly uncompetitive – that does not mean I’m not ambitious – and everyone who knows me will know that I am fairly unceremonial – my youthful enthusiasm for zen buddhism was dampened by the recognition that it was too laden with ritual – so awards don’t come naturally to me. I’ve recently been a judge at a major national work based learning award, and have also had the pleasure of handing over our college’s staff achievement awards – both pleasurable and exciting experiences which for the participants combined both competition and ceremony; and I must say that I was honoured to facilitate what to them is truly important and a recognition of their achievement. Now I’m the kind of guy who will take part in a survey or focus group and then turn down the reward because I won’t need it, so the thought of wanting to enter an award is not something which will resonate with me. But what I have learnt is that it really really matters to people, and that is something I personally can connect to very much. So, if you’re thinking of an award, don’t expect me to want to win it, but keep me in mind for judging and presenting, because I have learnt about myself that I really enjoy that.
Posted in Work life
October 11th, 2011 by matthias
A very short and frustrating lesson I’m learning today: it’s very hard to work on the go when both wireless and 3G signal drop out while moving through the countryside on the way to a meeting…
Posted in Work life