I am at a cross road. Is that one word or two? Singular or plural?
I have written so many waffly (unpublishable) posts recently and you should thank me that I haven’t posted them.
There are big upheavals coming. Okay, they won’t even be noticeable to most people, but for me, they are significant.
I work in a business faculty, something that always makes me confused. I’m not sure how that happened. But the future is upon us, and that future is not what I thought it was. I thought that business of the future would possibly be more engaged with ‘consumers’, ‘client’s’ or whatever we call ourselves. But I am wrong!
Business as she is taught now (and I don’t know why she is she, but she must be) is about know what worked last year. There, I’ve said it. Everything around me seems to be looking backwards. I keep looking forward. Okay, maybe not really forward, more around and about and up and down, I’m not really a visionary, particularly not when it comes to business.
So it is with heavy feet and glad heart, that I declare myself to be not a business person, not an IS person. I did try, I’ve been trying for four and a half years. But, alas, I failed. I failed to become what I didn’t want to be. Hence the glad heart.
But one thing I will miss is teaching a course called Mobile Workforce Technologies. It’s not even about technology, nor about business even though its name says technology and it’s located in a business faculty. This course has given me so much, provided me with such insights into human learning, to cultural differences, to community and many more ideas. I want it to keep going. I want to make a place like that that lives beyond a single semester.
I have another domain that I’m using for that course. I think it would be a great place to develop a shared resource for learning technologies. I may well start that. The domain is shiftingsand.net. Why shiftingsand.net? Have you ever tried to catch shifting sand with a net? No? Neither have I. But the idea of that, of catching the shifting sand of our times, the learning and changes around us is what lead me to that domain.
I want to create a community there. I want the learners of the world to engage in defining what it means to learn now. I’m seriously thinking of setting up a wiki (gotta love a wiki) and a space for a community to develop.
Does anyone want to play?
Hello,
An insightful post. I am still talking to the PTB’s about our situation and trying, mainly with one person and not the other. I agree with most of what you have said. I would say in the broadest sense, no you are not a business person, but yes in the strictest sense if things were different you could be. Could be how? You are what businesses need, I only need to point to our MBA friend from last year to show you that. There are people that get it. We just don’t work with them. Now, I have been in business faculties since the year dot (well 1997) and I get it. I have three degrees in business and I get it. There others I know who run businesses, in other countries even, who get it. So I would warn you against judging your assumptions on the local environment. In my opinion, you are just what business needs… several others think so too. Business doesn’t know what it needs, until it gets it. If you read Sloan or HBR you can see what you are saying over and over again. Learning, communities, sharing and so on. It’s there.
However, I suspect your insights will take you elsewhere which is what bothers me. Who will teach businesses and ICT people to build communities? Sloan? I bloody doubt it. Businesses always get insights from artists and vice versa, the coming revolution in publishing and music is a case in point. In fact, artists build the best business plans and often win business modelling competitions. Why? Because they are creative, know how to learn and able to think critically. Business needs more artists, like you, helping them how to think. Which is what makes this the worst of all possible outcomes. Learning, teaching and community thinking are as applicable to business as any social institution.
That said, I agree, you have to do what’s right in your heart and follow whatever it is you think you have to do.
Luke out!
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