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Insights, updates, and stories from the world of education and professional development.
Workplace readiness. It’s hunting and gathering.
Transitioning from school or university can be tough. When you consider ‘workplace readiness’ and what this might encompass, it soon becomes apparent that work newbies need a strong foundation to survive and succeed at work. We have all heard seasoned workplace crew saying “they don’t know what work is” or that “they don’t know how to work” when describing newbies at the office, forgetting that a bridge to work is required for everyone. They have forgotten that what they call “normal” at work was once strange and scary to them too. Its not about being a millennial or being lazy and entitled, it’s about arriving at work excited and inspired and not knowing where to direct all the energy and enthusiasm you walk in with. Newbies need a bridge to cross over into work and the workplace also needs to be ready to receive them. A colleague once described how two super-smart interns showed up for a six-week work experience in her accounting firm. It was pre-COVID and the office was full. They were bubbling with excitement and smiles. After making coffee for everyone, making copies, being told to wait for someone to tell them what to do for hours […]
Searching for Personal Significance: A foundational element of a learning architecture
Cliff BrunetteDr. Rica ViljoenAbstractIn today’s fast-paced, commercially-orientated world of work it is easy to lose some of what we, as humans, are.The demand to produce more, in less time, is an ever-changing expectation that each employee must be able to cope with. Yet, what we teach employees during training programmes is to cope with more content, more rules and more conformity.Most training programmes today are focused on compliance and administrative efficiency, rather than learning. In this article the authors are turning their search to an often elusive missing ingredient. If it becomes part of the focus of the training effort, this ingredient can assist the employee to be better in many more procedural aspects and also teach them how to better deal with the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity of today’s corporate world.That ingredient is personal significance.Key wordsPersonal significance; VUCA; Sense-making; Consciousness; Self-efficacy; Locus of control; Relevance; Flow theory IntroductionSocieties today are faced with overwhelming challenges of complexity - and a good measure of chaos. With what seems to be a breakdown in general value systems and the lightning speed of change and technological development, it would be easy to find a person clinging to anything that is remotely familiar.One […]
Augmented leadership through adaptive intelligence
Cliff BrunetteSeptember 2019Reference as: Brunette, C.; Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). (2019). Research Bulletin on Post-School Education & Training: Number 8. Pretoria: DHET.Available on the Department’s website: www.dhet.gov.zaas well as https://www.researchgate.net/AbstractIn this article, the author explores the notion that traditional learning architectures are too slow to keep up with the speed of learning required to match the rate of organisational adaptation.The author posits that the rate of organisational adaptation within the fourth industrial revolution requires a new learning architecture that should enable an innovative view of organisational learning itself. However, such a learning architecture would depend on augmented leadership who can harness the collective intelligence, and enable multi-frame thinking, within their organisational teams.Such a view of organisational learning, however, requires leaders to challenge their own - and their team’s – very human moral dilemma of holding a single truth. The new learning architecture will have to compensate for, and enable, multi-truth intelligence, or rather adaptive intelligence, which could be obtained through the embedding of axioms within the learning architecture.Key WordsAugmented leadership; adaptive intelligence; adaptation; axiom; collective intelligence; Fourth Industrial Revolution; learning architecture; multi-frame thinking; multi-truth;IntroductionIn this global village called Earth, or what we call our world, there is […]
The challenge of finding time to study
Despite the pause on physical social interactions imposed by lockdowns and social distancing, life is still accelerating at an unprecedented rate. Speed dating, power naps, and apps to help us manage and save time have not helped. All the promises to save time, made by vendors of high tech devices have not created more time for us – overall time is a scarcer resource. Recently a company in New Zealand invented drive-through funerals, and as ridiculous as that sounds, they have made money. We “make time”, by waking up earlier and working later and limiting leisure time. Just getting through all our obligations and demands seems to take more and more time. When on earth can we find time to study? To help address this, we’ve compiled a few tricks and methods which you can hopefully adopt to make this a little easier. Technology has become an inextricable part of our lives, but how often do we make the most of what we have under our noses? The kindest thing you could probably do for yourself would be to declutter your desk and create a neat, clear workspace, so that you can focus, without looking through stacks of papers or […]
The need for a revised Organising Framework for Occupations in the Banking Sector
Author: Indira Bhagaloo - 2018 Introduction On 27 March 2018, President Cyril Ramaphosa launched the Youth Employment Services (YES) initiative, which aims to guarantee over a million young South Africans paid work experience during the next three years. This social compact between government, business and labour is part of government’s drive to achieve inclusive economic growth in the country – one of the goals of the National Development Plan, as encapsulated in Vision 2030. One of the advantages of this workplace experience is that it will clearly indicate which skills are most urgently needed in workplaces for them to function most efficiently and effectively. When the Sectoral Education and Training Institutions (SETAs) were re-established in 2005 by the Minister of Labour, they were tasked with managing skills development needs across various sectors, where graduates should be equipped with life skills to enter the world of work with ease and quickly become productive (Department of Higher Education, 2005; National Plan for Higher Education, 2001). However, it has been argued by the Department of Higher Education and Training, (2015) that they need to be repurposed to meet current training needs in the workplace. The report suggests that since their creation in 2000, […]
Adaptation, survival, and the 'Agile Equation'
This week, one year ago, calamity was closing in. COVID has been a crisis of disruption - it’s a year later, and the world is a changed place. We’ve been disrupted on a mega-colossal scale. Humanity has had to learn adapt in unprecedented ways. We’ve seen folly and heroism, and the casualty count has been catastrophic. Never has the truth been so besieged by nonsense, and never have cool heads and kind hearts so desperately needed to prevail. The challenges of survival have shifted patterns of human working, buying, travelling, interacting, loving, and politicking. The world can never be the same – probably in ways we will not understand for years. What can we learn from the pandemic experience? I have personally became intrigued by a cluster of adaptive patterns that I see described in business literature and observe in personal experience. I coined a shorthand phrase to describe it:‘the agile equation’: “Survival through disruption is a function of agility – the capability to adapt to rapidly changing and unclear or unknown circumstances. Agility requires, at a minimum, innovation, collaboration, and a relentless focus on open thought and critical problem-solving for value in multi-stakeholder ecosystems. Agility is degraded by authoritarian behaviour and compliance-driven work […]
From the CEO’s desk: Living your learning.
To live as a human is to live tethered to a dream. Some dreams are grand and glorious - the desire for fame, wealth, a worthwhile legacy - while some are more beautifully modest. Regardless of what final form your dream takes, we are tasked with spending our lives discovering the best tools and methods to find and shape our dreams. Whether your dream is superb or simple, CPS aims to empower those motivated enough to sculpt their dreams with learning and provide the learning journey that is a best fit for the job. In the Information Age, the global economy moved toward being a knowledge economy. This interconnected and disrupted economy continues to challenge us. Sources of knowledge, such as human expertise and trade secrets, are crucial factors in economic growth and are considered important economic resources. Today, in these COVID times we find ourselves grappling with what digital leadership means and the mindset we need to unlock the benefits that digital workplaces hold. Most of our dreams require scaling new heights in a changing landscape and the story that unfolds for each of us, inevitably involves learning. At CPS our learning involves technology, information, knowledge and digital access, […]
Slow Leadership: it’s not how you lead, its who you are.
Leading into a digital age, through a pandemic, in businesses threatened by economic contraction and disruption, knowing that the emerging future requires fundamentally different leadership acumen, is no easy task. Those who skilled up for the 4th IR caught an early wave that has not yet carried leadership far enough. COVID pushed everyone online and corona compromised leaders had to do a massive re-think of their businesses as “pivot” and “re-invent” became practical survival tactics, instead of concepts about possible future disruptions. For many businesses, two-year future focused strategies became operational imperatives over a matter of days. Leaders had to absorb the shock and act quickly and carefully - not all were up to the task. Leading in virtual spaces has clearly brought with it challenges of its own for leadership. The relevance and identity of leaders is in question, now more than ever. There is suddenly consensus that leadership is an “emerging field” as old ideas dissolve and new thinking takes shape to suit the current business milieu. Online meetings, connecting through screens, and COVID-19 stress, all coupled with general uncertainty about job security, requires a new “slow leadership”, where leaders are truly present, listening and engaged. The authenticity […]
Get a “welcome bonus” from your brain
Brains are truly remarkable devices. They can grow and change shape depending on what we feed them. We are constantly challenging ourselves to taste that sweet chemical cocktail that our brains release when we really achieve something. When your brain gives you the reward you worked towards, the feeling is unparalleled. Yes! Saying no to cake, jumping up when the alarm clock rings and keeping just one of those New Year’s resolutions all result in that addictive ahhh feeling. Once we know we can do something previously thought impossible, our brains give us big dose of positivity in the hope that we keep up the good behaviour … this is what I call “a welcome bonus” from your brain! Often the greatest possible welcome bonuses come from applying a new skill. Learning to drive, mastering new software, or applying leading-edge interpersonal tactics can give us a huge sense of satisfaction. So how do we maximise the welcome bonuses, get the learning loyalty points and convince our brains to give us the results we need? William Deresiewicz, American scholar and author, gives us a major clue: “It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of […]
Evaluating the Transfer of Learning: A Case Study of a South African Retail Bank
Indira Bhagaloo (PhD) Da Vinci Institute for Technology Management Johannesburg, South Africa indirab@performancesolutions.co.za Prof Krishna Govender# School of Management, IT and Governance University of KwaZulu-Natal Durban, South Africa govenderkrishna@gmail.com #:corresponding author Abstract This paper reports on a case study conducted at one of the five leading South African retail banks, intended to critically examine factors that enable the transfer of learning in the organisation, and evaluate if collaborative learning interventions enable sustainable strategic organisational shifts. The study followed a qualitative research approach using inductive reasoning to analyse data obtained from a purposive sample comprising 70 sales consultants and 50 sales leaders, who were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire. The findings highlighted the need for systems thinking to develop a framework for learning that could be applied in organisations, as this will assist to change behaviour that will enable strategic organisational shifts. The framework could be used as a compass for a collaborative systemic leader-led approach to learning, by identifying roles and responsibilities, defining design principles and measuring the impact of the intervention. Keywords: adult education, collaborative learning, applied learning, learning impact Introduction Namada (2018, p.35) describes organisational learning as ‘’a practise where organisational members engage in processes to transfer and […]
Get a “welcome bonus” from your brain.
Brains are truly remarkable devices. They can grow and change shape depending on what we feed them. We are constantly challenging ourselves to taste that sweet chemical cocktail that our brains release when we really achieve something. When your brain gives you the reward you worked towards, the feeling is unparalleled. Yes! Saying no to cake, jumping up when the alarm clock rings and keeping just one of those New Year’s resolutions all result in that addictive ahhh feeling. Once we know we can do something previously thought impossible, our brains give us big dose of positivity in the hope that we keep up the good behaviour … this is what I call “a welcome bonus” from your brain! Often the greatest possible welcome bonuses come from applying a new skill. Learning to drive, mastering new software, or applying leading-edge interpersonal tactics can give us a huge sense of satisfaction. So how do we maximise the welcome bonuses, get the learning loyalty points and convince our brains to give us the results we need? William Deresiewicz, American scholar and author, gives us a major clue: “It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of […]
Infodemics and the wellness of knowledge
Fake news has become such a scourge in recent years that the term no longer needs to be contained in quotation marks. The world is currently experiencing a huge rise in mistrust for the media – especially, the dreaded “mainstream media”. As a result, we frequently wonder about the trustworthiness of sources of information. There was so much information disseminated about the COVID 19 outbreak that the World Heath organisation noted the volume and rapid scale-up of facts, but also misinformation and disinformation, and stated that it was an unprecedented “infodemic” that threatened to have a negative impact on the management of the spread of the virus. How then do we go about practicing information and knowledge hygiene that we need in to combat infodemics like this one? How do we equip ourselves for the rolling waves of infodemics that flood social media as so many “experts” pollute and carelessly litter our knowledge ecology? Sceptics and disbelievers have been vital throughout the course of human history in challenging the dogmas that societies often find themselves subjected to. The original Greek meaning of skeptikos was “an inquirer,” someone who was unsatisfied and still looking for truth. Scepticism is in fact a […]
The most remarkable trait. We can un-learn.
The most remarkable trait shared by humans is our adaptability. The variety in which humans can live their lives is unparalleled in nature; while two lions might have slightly different hunting preferences or grooming techniques, every big cat will sleep for most of the day. Compare this to the plethora of people, cultures and devotions whose followers number in the hundreds of millions, in a world of billions. We can attribute this beautiful tapestry of humanity to our innate ability to not only construct paradigms or thought landscapes, through which we experience the world, but also our ability and appetite to shift these paradigms when we need to. The best example of how different paradigms inform different modes of thinking lies in how our language influences how we think. Being exposed to a more complex lexicon from an early age will definitely set apart two speakers of the same language. This is all rather basic - knowing more words enables greater self-expression. Paradigms can also present themselves in much more subtle ways. Fans of different genres of music will have different opinions on the best albums of the century. Likewise, both visible as well as imperceptible life experiences eventually culminate […]
A Motivation for Revised Learning Pathways and Curricula for Banking
Derek Shirley and Carin Stoltz-Urban August 2018 Contents Introduction. 3 1. The Turbulent Environment. 3 1.1 The Dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. 3 1.2 The VUCA World. 4 2. Banking and financial services in the VUCA world. 5 2.1 Disruption in the banking sector. 5 2.1.1 Technology. 5 2.1.2 Innovation and agility. 8 2.1.3 Client-centricity. 9 2.1.4 Regulation and compliance. 10 2.1.5 Risk Management. 11 2.2 Summary. Error! Bookmark not defined. 3. Learning and working in banking and financial services. 11 3.1 The learner of the 21st century. 12 3.2 Changing knowledge and skills in banking. 12 3.2.1 Ways of thinking. 14 3.2.2 Ways of working. 15 3.2.3 Tools for working. 16 3.2.4 Living in the world. 16 3.3 Education in and for the VUCA world. 18 3.3.1 Global and African talent development context. Error! Bookmark not defined. 4. The South African case. 19 4.1 The South African banking and financial services context. 19 4.2 The South African post-school education landscape. 21 4.3 Employment and education in the SA banking sector. 22 4.4 Developing the banker of the future. 24 4.4.1 Existing qualifications. 24 4.4.2 Emergent educational needs in banking and allied financial services. 25 REFERENCE LIST. 28 Introduction […]