I always said a life goal was to be published in Forbes, and happily, today my friend Dan Gingiss posted my CX New Years Resolution along with a compilation of resolutions from other CX friends to Forbes. This was a nice thing to see today. I’m still determined to get published by Forbes in my own right one day though! 😛
Here’s the post, thanks Dan!
My CX New Years Resolution, as mentioned in this post, is to do more working out loud – which is simply about giving voice to what you’re doing at work. There is an entire movement, a book, and peer support groups to help, which I must admit I haven’t explored a lot yet as my #1 goal for now is just to build a good writing habit.
Why is working out loud important?
Primarily I want to build better relationships, get more feedback, and become more open to collaboration. But also, I’m concerned about the impact of people hoarding information, and I want to make a stand against that.
As a trainer, I’ve come up against instances where SMEs are afraid to share what they know for fear that they will become less necessary. I get that. Work is relational and political, no matter what type of organisation you work within. And so many of us work in industries or companies with unstable job security, or in cultures that discourage collaboration. Whether that’s through forced rankings, open plan offices, or any other management practices which kill communication and pit us against each other.
If you’re a busy professional, it’s not always easy to share, either. It takes time and thought to communicate knowledge, especially knowledge that’s tacit – that which we have intuitively learned.
But if we care at all about keeping our organisations and professions healthy, useful and growing, I believe we all have a duty to contribute to developing our collective knowledge.
Not only because I have a utopian idea that professional knowledge and education should be accessible to everyone, no matter who you are, and that everyone should get the chance to be whatever kind of professional they wish if they are prepared to put in the work and the effort.
But also because humanity would have achieved next to nothing had we not shared our stories, ideas, thoughts with each other. Communication and sharing are how we achieve growth and change in the world.
My commitment
This year I want to share more, and more frequently. This is as good a place as any to share, and I will be breaking with my previous posting style to try and build a blog that’s a little warmer and more thoughtful than the cross-posted content I usually throw onto here.
I’m hoping to write a lot more about both CX and L&D, but I’m also not limiting myself to that. I’m a little tired of the notion of needing to maintain a professional persona that’s ‘strictly business’ (because I don’t agree with shaming people who don’t comply) so I might post about other things too.
I hope that all of this means that I can bring others closer while providing thoughts and ideas to muse upon. I want critique, conversation and for my mind to be changed. I’m looking forward to getting started.
