We hear a lot about the speed of change. What about the speed of work? While we weren’t looking, we’ve come to a point where many of us work on the fly.
Last week I watched a manager at a major corporation as she worked on several projects. She connected with dozens of people by phone, email, and text message. She connects with people in person, too, but not that day.
She pulled in information from several sources inside and outside her company and shared some of it with others. She had three meetings that day, all of which were online or via teleconference.
It seemed pretty hectic to me, so when I asked what her greatest challenge had been, I thought she would tell me about how fast things moved. She didn’t.
“I have to learn as I go. I’m gathering information for the projects I’m working on. That’s not too bad, but I’m always working with different people and that’s tough.”
She’s a midlevel manager now and she’d like to move up. She has an MBA which, she says, was great for the analytics, but otherwise is “pretty much useless.”
When she took a break I asked about her personal development plan. She said there’s a company one that “they keep on a hard drive someplace.” That doesn’t bother her because she’s always figured that her development was up to her.
She doesn’t have a plan. She knows some of the jobs she’d like to have down the road and she’s always looking for things to learn and do that will help her get there. Every weekend she reviews what she’s learned and who she’s connected with that will help her wind up in a good place.
That’s personal talent development on the fly. It’s not a planning process as much as picking a general direction. There are no details about courses to take as much as thinking about opportunities to be seized.
I think most talent development in the new workplace will happen that way. The question is: “What are those of us responsible for talent development doing to make it better, more universal, and easier?”
