The ABC's of Work &
Life
K is for Knowledge
Katie Mehnert gets hungry
and thirsty for knowledge.
Data, information, and knowledge.
It's all the same, right? Not exactly. Data are facts.
Information allows us to expand our knowledge beyond the range of
our senses. And knowledge is what we know. Today we live in a sea
of data and information.
However, our ability to drive our own knowledge is
greater than it has ever been. We can thank the 'Information Age'
and crowdsourcing for this phenomenon, right? Sort of.
Computers, and now social media, have given us a new
means to quickly get data and information.
There are a number of ways we learn. The traditional learning
pyramid shows the various ways we learn, what we generally
remember, and our level of involvement in the learning
experience.
In my line of work, I coach teams and individuals
to drive greater performance outcomes through learning and
development. Several years ago, I came to one very important
realisation:
To be successful today and tomorrow, we must all
become obsessed with learning.
If you think you are useful today, simply knowing what you know,
think again. To stay competitive, you must be hungry for ways to
expand your knowledge. I argue you need to take it a step further,
go beyond expanding knowledge, and create knowledge for
others.
The social economy rewards those who create
knowledge. Don't believe me? Here's a short story very
relevant to how I even became connected with you, today!
A year ago, I wrote this piece on leadership. lt
carefully detailed out every rotten type of leader I had ever
encountered. I poked fun and even came up with funny titles to give
each of them. The fact is, I was in so much pain dealing with these
people I decided to laugh more and let go of my stress! I savoured
the story, though for months, I had it tucked away in my computer
for safe keeping, worried I was being too harsh. One day, I decided
to be brave and share it online back when Linkedln was just
beginning to roll out its Pulse news platform. I posted it on 'a
holiday, thinking no one would read it.
I was wrong. Or was I?
The Internet rewarded me handsomely. At 2am local time, my
iPhone surged with texts, dings and beeps. Several hundred
thousands of views, likes, and comments filled numerous websites.
Overnight, people all over the world were engaging to agree with
me. They honoured me with their war stories at the office, bad
bosses, and the like. They connected on every channel, all because
I spoke the truth. I
created knowledge that people could relate with and understand.
In fact, I wouldn't be writing this column had it
not been for that viral post.
So don't just expand your knowledge, create some of your
own and share it.
It's easy to think what we know today is all we need to know,
quite simply because we were taught that way. If you think back to
your days in school, what were they for?
One of my professional crushes, Seth Godin, says
school existed to teach obedience. He's right. The data shows
worldwide that we've been on a journey shifting from an
industrial economy to an intellectual, knowledge-based economy -
and that we are never going back.
Be hungry for new things.
In my career, I moved from processes and systems, to people.
Across that spectrum, I increased my knowledge by taking on
assignments that exposed me to projects and operations across
multiple businesses. In the oil and gas industry, for example, I've
seem both upstream and downstream processes, and lived in two very
distinct business cultures. None of this would have been possible
without my personal obsession with learning, openness to trying new
things, and need to learn by "going and seeing".
Is our educational system keeping up with these
same principles? In America, I can confidently say, "No."
Why should you care?
Do you think because you don't have kids, you shouldn't care?
Think again. Our kids are counting on us because they need to get
the education and experiences needed to lead us into the
future.
If we don't become obsessed about our own learning
and changing the systems that these were built upon, like our
schools, we are kidding ourselves if we want to be competitive,
grow, and prosper. lt's as simple as that.
So I ask you:
• How are you becoming
obsessed with learning? Did you learn something new today?
• What was it? Can you
think about it and shape a piece of knowledge that you can share
with others?
• Do you know what
school was for and how we got here? lf not, read Seth's manifesto,
Stop Stealing Dreams or Watch the TED talk.
• What are you doing
to get involved in developing our next generation of leaders?
• What new piece of
knowledge did you pick up in this piece? Drop me a line. You know I
would love to get email from all of you.
Katie Mehnert is a global talent
development and change executive with 17 years of helping people
and companies get curious, connect, share, grow and perform better.
She has recently been appointed CEO of Pink Petro;
www.pinkpetro.com, a platform to connect women and men
in the energy industry and advance females in her industry. Prior
to her latest venture, Katie was a Director with BP, joining after
the Deepwater Horizon incident and worked in various leadership
roles worldwide with Shell. She's a dynamic speaker and author
having been featured in LinkedIn, CEO.com, Business Insider, and
Yahoo. As a work-in-progress marathon runner, wife and working mom,
you can follow her musings on balancing it all on her blog
at www.katiemehnert.com,
or email her at [email protected]
Recruit, The Straits Times, Saturday, December 20, 2014, Pg
R1