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Learning Worker - good quotes from Jane "Peter Drucker coined the term, "knowledge worker", back in 1959 as a way to describe workers who were involved in non-routine problem-solving. I think, this is one reason why organisations have believed that training knowledge workers is all about "knowledge transfer" - pouring knowledge into peoples heads. Whereas, in the past, individuals were trained to do their jobs once and this would last them their whole careers, over time, as job roles became more sophisticated or new technology or procedures were introduced, training became a full-time operation to keep people knowledgeable, skilled and up to date. But the world is changing fast, and we are now living in a era of exponential information growth. (Huge amounts of data are being created every day).  But what is more, the half life of a piece of knowledge today is just around 5 years. (It is said that a college degree will be out of date before the loan is paid off).  But all this means we need to be continuously refreshing what we know."

Core messages re. hierarchical system and moving to network learning! "People need to take control of their learning in a world where they are simultaneously connected, mobile, and global; while conversely contractual, part-time, and local. Organizations must also move learning away from training and HR as some external quick-fix solution that gets called in from time to time. Learning must be an essential part of doing business in the network era. Learning has to be owned by the workers and learning support has to be a function of the business structure. If learning is the work today, why do we need a separate department responsible for managing it? And if workers really are responsible for their learning, why can't they take control of it?"

"A Foundation for Modern Work My Personal Knowledge Mastery model of Seek > Sense > Share is focused on helping individuals work better in teams, and contribute to professional communities by developing and engaging their social networks to continuously learn. This approach has been used in several organizations. Today, it is critical to take control of your own learning and build a professional network. Engaging with other people, especially those different from us, is the key to making sense of information."

Jane Hart - a major shift "In this post, however, I want to consider the Individual's Perspective of Workplace Learning. First of all, please note, I have not used the word Learner here, because for the Individual - the employee, the worker - it is clear it is not all about the learning but about the work. It's primarily about getting their work done, addressing performance problems, and being part of a functioning team - and in fact learning is often an unconscious activity here! But it is also about personal improvement through both company-organised and self-initiatives, and about keeping up to date with what is happening in their industry or profession so that they remain relevant. So, here is a graphic that shows 10 ways how an individual might learn at and for work."

""The fiction at the heart of neoliberalism is that everybody can enjoy the consumer lifestyle without wages rising," Mason writes. "You can go on creating money forever but if a declining share of it flows to workers, and yet a growing part of profits is generated out of their mortgages and credit cards, you are eventually going to hit a wall. At some point, the expansion of financial profit through providing loans to stressed consumers will break, and snap back.""

"What Skills will Self-Sustain Digital Workers? To be fair to IT and HR departments around the world, the digital workplace target does move incredibly fast and is picking up speed. And there never was a finish line. Fortunately, I believe there are novel, effective and increasingly well-understood new ways for most organizations to address their current digital workplace gaps, and it's not (just) by "giving up non-essential control", deploying liberal BYOD/BYOT programs to cultivate employee-led change, figuring out how to do things like learn or change behavior faster, or any of the ten strategies I've previously recommended."

Toyota worries that automation means it has too many average workers and not enough craftsmen and masters. But if you increase Talent and decrease Labour, what else needs to change? Pretty well the entire management/leadership system and particularly 'human resource' management.

2008 post - good intro for workers here. "PKM is a set of processes, individually constructed, to help the flow of implicit to explicit knowledge. However, PKM is more about attitude than any particular tool set. It's taking (or rediscovering) our innately curious nature and tapping into it so that we can continue to expand our horizons."

Good Why social business is needed... "Democratization of information: User-generated content is ubiquitous and much of it is very useful. Search engines give each worker more information and knowledge than any CEO had 10 years ago. Pervasive connectivity will change traditional power structures, though the full effects of this are not yet visible."

Cooperation is the foundation for network strength and worker value!! "From today's perspective, one might say that everyone has to be highly competitive. But the long term effects of hyper-competition will decrease the value of any network. A value network consists of both tangible and intangible asset transactions. Trust is an intangible asset. It enables knowledge to flow. People do not share with those they do not trust. "

"First of all, it is becoming obvious that the fundamental nature of work is changing as we transition into a post-job economy. The major driver of this change is the automation of procedural work, especially through software, but increasingly with robots. The drivers behind the post-job economy are also changing our work structures. Organizations will need to become more networked, not just with information technology, but how knowledge workers create, use, and share knowledge. This new workplace also will require different leadership that emerges from the network and temporarily assumes control, until new leadership is required. Giving up control will be a major challenge for anyone used to the old ways of work. An important part of leadership will be to ensure that knowledge is shared. But moving to a knowledge-sharing organizational structure will be difficult, because of the knowledge sharing paradox; which is that the more control is exerted, the less knowledge is shared. All of these challenges need to be addressed, and rather quickly, as software continues to eat jobs, and income disparities get wider."

So much to do, so little time...I'm posting on this article by Jarche...for sure. "For the past century, the job was the way we redistributed wealth and protected workers from the negative aspects of early capitalism. As the knowledge economy disappears, we need to re-think our concepts of work, income, employment, and most importantly education. If we do not find ways to help citizens lead productive lives, our society will face increasing destabilization. This is a challenge for government, as our institutions are premised on many assumptions that are no longer valid. Changing the worldview of politicians, public servants, and citizens will be a key part of addressing the issue of wealth redistribution. Old mental models will not help us much."

"As we learn to think for ourselves, we must also connect with others. We are only as smart as our knowledge networks. But we do not need someone to manage our connections. The simple guideline of self-direction, often enabled by network technologies, can create beautifully complex relationships amongst interconnected people. "