An email this morning from our Learning and Development System let me know that the following courses are going to be closed – or in consultantese, ‘sunsetted’. The irony is, of course, that they’re all still as valid today as when they were originally entered into the system – or rather the title of them was, without commentary on the actual content of the course:
- Strategic Planning and Risk Management
- Understanding the New Value-Based Metrics
- Communication Skills for Effective Customer Service
- Effective Interviewing Techniques
- Listening Skills
- Preventive Stress Management
- Understanding the Process of Customer Decision-Making
- Foundations for Business Execution
- Computer Systems Aiding Decision Makers
Does it seem valid to teach consulting and customer and user experience? Does come from reading about a best practice, or by applying that best practice in a client relationship, because in the case of some of the technologies and trends, there are no ‘best practices’ yet?
My questions is at what point do you decide to take a course in a classroom (or other methods) to learn something, and when do you decide to dive into the pool and just…do it? How does training translate into competency in a field? Where does expertise and competency live in our equation as business professionals and knowledge workers? The issue of certification and being qualified often comes up in debates around user experience design, and it’s a valid point. With no professional association willing to tread down that road, who is to say when one ‘knows’ enough about one’s discipline to be named an expert in it? And when it comes to education for those in technology consulting, how do you stay aware of what matters that affects your understanding of the issues? Aside from my quest for a Trending Dashboard, of course.
I also think about these topics as I wrestle with the idea of where to next, for my professional development. I joke that with the time I’ve debated going to grad school I would have graduated by now; I also joke that when they make a true Business Design Technology School I will be the first to get there to enroll (no, Stanford’s dSchool is not necessarily the answer). The contrast for me is also because of the pull between the more theoretical (the strategic view) and the more hands on, practical, ‘building things’ view, which describes my feet in both camps as a designer. The question is, if you’re someone who lives on those levels as a classic T shaped person, where to go next. I think of some of the most intelligent people I know – one, my grandfather, who was a newspaper columnist back in Canada. He had his own column for decades, and I know that he would have looked quizzically at the notion of ‘J-School’ – that the field of journalism could be ‘taught’ in a classroom. He took a more tactical approach – leaving England at 16, arriving in Canada and working his way up from the proverbial mail room (or in newspaper terms, the typesetter) up to the City Desk, and eventually the Editorial pages and eventually his own column. He would have argued that the education he needed to get him up that path was his library card and his voracious curiousity about the world, which could never be satisifed by any class room or figure behind a lecturn. Perhaps there’s a role for multiple styles of learning and ways to learn. I wonder what my grandfather would be doing in my situation – and which courses, if any, he’d be taking.
Regards,
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