After four months of searching for a job, I’m happy to say that I’m excited about a new role as a Learning Architect with a major insurance company in Australia, IAG.
The role is for three months and I’ll be part of the Capability and Learning team who will roll out a new social collaboration and curation platform next week.
Although I will not be actively blogging or working out loud here on my blog (I will be doing it internally instead), I will be learning in my own way to consider how I can best support my business clients and organisation with my knowledge, skills, networks and experiences.
If anything, being back in the corporate world means that I can observe, learn and reflect on the different opportunities and challenges that a learning team goes through when an organisation is in the throes of massive transformation….and then be prepared for them when I return to independent consulting. (Rest assured, I will be coming back to it).
The last few years, working as an independent consultant has been wonderful as it has allowed me to pursue my interests of personalised and social learning as well as meet people from across industries, business and professions.
I am also proud of what I have achieved. I’ve built my own resources, networks, processes, tools as well as a huge amount of content from blog posts, articles, workshops, webinars, coaching packages, case studies, e-books and videos – and I’ve loved writing them all.
However, working for myself has had its ups and downs and it’s been a big lesson for me.
The biggest realisation that social, as well as personalised learning is not – and cannot – ever be driven or pushed down by a Learning and Development function (or any function) no matter how hard they try, no matter what tools, technology, apps, games or platforms they implement.
It’s also not a product off the shelf that they can slot into their organisation, nor a platform they roll out and then have strategies and tactics after the fact to push their people to adopt.
It goes a lot deeper than that – it stems from generosity, authenticity, openness, role modelling, relationship building, sharing your work and coming from the position of “not knowing”.
Sure, Learning and Development can help managers and teams to support and enable their learning to drive performance outcomes but they cannot be responsible for the motivation of that individual to learn in the workplace.
So therein lays my own personal journey to help people find that spark and show people how they can show their unique skills, abilities and talents in their workplace – and this is what I look forward to any role and any client I work with. (I know that the spark is there. Just ask someone in the corporate world what they do outside of the 9 to 5 grind and you’ll hear of budding publishers, aspiring writers, entrepreneurs, artisans, organic gardeners, fitness trainers – people doing the things they love and who ARE ALREADY ON SOCIAL NETWORKS ACTIVELY SHARING THEIR WORK AND LEARNING through their networks and communities).
I am looking forward to this new role with this progressive company and hope that in some way, I can help support their business and people to find their spark.
