Aug

17

Creative geniuses….

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“Creative geniuses are geniuses because they know ‘how’ to think instead of ‘what’ to think.” - Michael Michalko, Author of Cracking Creativity

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Aug

8

Versatilists, a New Breed of IT Professionals?

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Gartner is predicting future IT professionals would need to become versalists, as opposed to specialists or generalists. So what’s the difference? Well…..

  • Specialists have technical skills and knowledge which is deep and narrow, they rely on their deep knowledge within a specific domain to give them an advantage within their field.
  • Generalists have a broad, shallow range of skills and knowledge. Their broad knowledge allows them to respond quickly to emerging opportunities and threats, giving them an advantage in their field.
  • Versalists are able to blend the depth of the specialist with the breadth of the generalist within changing business contexts. They are able to leverage relationships and develop competencies and skills to add value to rapidly changing contexts.

At first glance this notion seems impossible for a single individual to master. However, rapidly changing business and technology environments, create opportunities for IT professionals to develop a portfolio of competencies, skills and knowledge. Within this context IT professionals can develop a broad portfolio of competencies and skills allowing then to respond quickly to changing business requirements and in so doing add tremendous value to an organisation.

So, according to Gartner, how does one become a versalist? By:

  • Objectively reviewing your experiences and roles.
  • Looking outside the confines of your current role, region, employer or business unit. The more informed you are about a company, its industry segment and the forces that affect them, the greater your contextual grasp.
  • Laying out your opportunities and assignments methodically. Focusing on the areas and challenges that make you squirm; those generally will be the areas of greatest growth.
  • Exploring possibilities outside the world of corporate business. Not-for-profit ventures, startups, government agencies and consumer IT service providers offer powerful ways to bolster experiences, behavioral competencies or management skills.
  • Enrolling in advanced degree programs or in qualified education courses to expand your perspective.

The suggestion to enroll in advanced degree programmes is something I support, although I have a biased view!
Could the future demand for versalists be one of the reasons we are seeing to be an increase in the demand for MBA graduates?

My personal view is that versalists would tend to be older, someone who has had a couple of years experience in a specific discipline, coupled with broad experiences within an organisation or industry. Masters of an organisation and its associated industry context, quick to adapt to changing environments and able to perform multiple roles.

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Aug

6

Overwork?

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An interesting peace of research released by the Families and Work Institute reports on overwork in America, looking at the findings it seems to me that problem is widespread. The goal of the study was “to better identify how the ways we work today and how we prioritize our lives on and off the job are related to being overworked.” According to the study, 1 in 3 American’s experienced the feeling of being chronically overworked, this is an issue because overwork affects us in the following ways:

  • Increased mistakes.
  • Increased stress levels, negatively affecting our health.
  • Increased occurrences of clinical depression.
  • Are more likely to report that our health is poorer.
  • Are more likely to neglect caring for ourselves.
  • Employees are more likely to experience anger towards their employer.
  • Employees are more likely to resent others who don’t work as hard as they do.

The feeling of being overworked is strongly influenced by the way we work, by factors such as:

  • Lack of focus - too much multi-tasking and too many interruptions.
  • Increased job pressure.
  • Low-value work - working on things that are a “waste of time”.
  • Accessibility - 24/7 contact and working outside of normal working hours.
  • Working while on vacation.

The findings suggest that organisation’s need to reconsider the way work gets done!

A useful analogy is competitive sports where it is well known that periods of recovery need to be interspersed within periods of pushing hard.

Suggested strategies cited in the report are:

  • Focus. There should be a balance between times when employees can concentrate on the task at hand and when they are multi-tasking and being interrupted. Work teams need to set the parameters. For example, some work teams have set aside times during the day when employees do not interrupt each other.
  • Job pressure. Again, there should be a balance between the kind of pressure that energizes employees and fosters the development of new competencies and the kind of pressure that depletes them. Setting more realistic deadlines may be part of the solution as some employers have discovered.
  • Low-value work. Work teams need to discuss and define the work they do that is high-priority and the work they do that is low-value. Then they can find ways to either drop or change the low-value work so that the time and energy they spend at work is more efficient.
  • Accessibility. Work teams need to discuss how accessible to one another they need to be to each other outside normal work hours and set parameters around when it is important to contact each other and when it isn’t.
  • Working while on vacation. Employers should encourage their employees to take their vacations and to take them in longer stretches if possible. Employers and employees need to be made aware of the possible disadvantages of working on vacation and the importance of having vacations serve their central purpose of providing time for employees to rest and recharge their batteries.

The full report has to be purchased, however an Executive Summary is available here.

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