Bilderberg Kasteel, Vaalsbrook, Netherlands
I spent the last three days participating on an international panel convened by the Center for Learning and Knowledge Management (ZLW) at the RWTH Aachen University to foster workplace and knowledge innovation with the Maas-Rhein Region. This little region is comprised of three countries and several semi-autonomous regions where German, Dutch, French and Flemish are spoken; it’s model of multi-culturalism.
Our take on the issues was surprisingly congruent, given that the two dozen participants, mostly professors, came from the UK, Netherlands, Canada, Israel, Italy, Germany, Sweden, China, Finland, Russia, and Norway. We jabbered away in presentations, World Cafe, over dinner, during a factory tour, in deliberations, and while wandering around the Aachen Christmas Market.
I learned a whale of a lot, so I expect to be dribbling out ah-ha moments as they come to me over the next few days. Before I launch into what other people said, I’ll share my main rants and biases.
Any thinking about the future of industry, work-life balance, regional innovation, corporate culture, or motivation that fails to take the economy into account is folly. I foresee mass unemployment, vast dislocations, corporate bankruptcies galore, volatile capital markets, and living on tight rations for years to come. This is the big one. Even if you don’t go along with my doomsday scenario, isn’t the very possibility something to factor into your thinking?
Some talked about what to do. Others have yet to smell the coffee. We endured a one-hour lecture at Aachen University by a consultant/professor who described an elaborate, multi-hundred-million Euro plan for Centers of Excellence. He did not once mention what’s happening with the economy. This is ludicrous.
I’ve championed the notion of informal learning for a number of years but the term doesn’t fully capture what I want to describe. Informal doesn’t mean random or wanton or without purpose. I’ve been attacked for questioning the formal ways that books, teachers, and the establishment dispense knowledge because people confuse informal with frivolous.
About a year ago, I began talking about natural learning because it lent itself to descriptions of learning by discovery, through conversation, and by collaboration. Unfortunately, natural learning doesn’t imply using performance support when that’s a better way to get things done than stuffing things into people’s heads. Furthermore, neither informal nor natural address achieving a goal, and that’s the sort of learning I am interested in promoting.
A chat with Klaus Henning, who heads the Center for Learning and KM and the University’s Department of Information Management in Mechanical Engineering, got my mental gears turning. We talked about competenz. Competenz is the end product of the sort of natural or informal learning I advocate.
Why not use the English word competence? Because that term has been co-opted by consultants selling competency management systems. That’s not my area. Never will be. The few competency management systems I’ve dug into have little to do with today’s reality. When work is improv, competency management loses meaning. Also, I don’t want to be associated with Tom Gilbert’s behaviorist tract, Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance.
What do you think? Should I begin using competenz as shorthand for gaining the ability to get things done?
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
It may be that the reason that “emergent” and “natural” are not getting the job done is that the concept/experience you are talking about is an incredibly rich one that begs for more words.
It is unclear to me why you want to find a single word that encapsulates such a richly complex idea. I would think that using more words, though each as short as possible, would be both more enjoyable and more meaningful.
I’m not sure that “competenz” is any more meaningful than “gtatgtd.”
Personally, I think shorthand is a bad idea. I see it as exclusionary and leading to jargon that is meaningless to all but the initiated.
And “gaining the ability to get things done” isn’t so long that it needs a shorter replacement, in my opinion.
I try to discipline my communication so that it is as simple and as clear as possible…and as jargon free as possible.
But you have a perfect right to say whatever you want to say. If you think saying “competenz” will help you communicate the content of what you mean by “gaining the ability to get things done,” then go for it.
Let us know how much easier it makes your conversations go. I’m sincerely curious about whether there are any instances where jargon is actually helpful enough in communicating concepts that I should rethink my opinion about using it.
I’m in favor of taking back “competence” from the consultants selling competency management systems . What you are trying to communicate is broader and closer to the true meaning of that word than what they mean. I’d be happy to buy one of your bumper stickers that say “Take Back Competence.”
c.
Br’er Claude,
I should have been more clear about my intentions. I need a shorthand term to use as a title for my forthcoming book and as a title for conference presentations.
Gaining the Ability to Get Things Done might be a better title; I’ll stick that one in the mental hopper for now.
After a mug of gluhwein, something like competenz sounds pretty cool.
Jay,
Informal learning is exactly what you need to stick with in my opinion. It is part of informal organization, certainly not a frivolous term, supporting the work practices that allow people to solve exceptions to formal business processes.
Just my 2 cents,
Larry
Jay, I’m not sure I’d throw out competencies. Even in the churn there are meta-learning competencies to leverage: ability to re-represent a problem, ability to evaluate data found on an information resource, etc. They’re not role-specific, they’re generic but we probably ought to be identifying opportunities for skill development, and providing support until folks achieve some level of, yes, competency. I agree with Claude: “take back competence”.
As a worker on the frontlines of “foreign qualifications recognition”, designing and developing programs that enable recognition of the prior learning (formal, informal and nonformal!) of immigrant professionals, I see a real need for a term such as “competenz”. I doubt that it will ever be possible to get consensus on a defintion of “competence”. The employers, HR people, and researchers I have contact with all understand the concept of “gaining the ability to get things done” – and they actively look for this quality (if it can be called that) in job applicants – they just need a word that better describes this than does “competence” (which has acquired all sorts of fuzzy and negative connotations).
Karol, from the symposium I was attending, “Real competence encompasses attitude, know how, and emotion.”
Clark, I’m far from throwing out competencies. I don’t like the term “competency management” and people who define competencies with check boxes, that’s all. I’m searching for the right words to describe my vision of getting people to where they’re getting things done.
Oh! In that case “Competenz” might well be a good book title. Many book covers incorporate subtitles to explain the main title. So your book could easily be “Competenz: Gaining the Ability to Get Things Done.”
Of course, the human tendency to shortcut makes it likely that some of your readers may adopt “competenz” and begin using it in conversations of the initiated. But then I’ll just have to ask them what they mean when they use that word.
claude
I’m posting this email note from Dr. Tarja Tikkanen:
Dear Colleagues,
It really was a great pleasure the meet you all and spend three days in stimulating discussion with you. Thank you again to Henning and his team for a successful arrangement. I am looking very much forward to your summary of the discussions.
Also, Jay, thank you very much for the nice slideshow…
… and the interesting reflections in your Learning Blog. I am thinking of your comment about economy… In some of the groups sessions in Aachen I was wondering whether it would be accurate to characterize the slight difference in the US and European approach so that while in the US ‘money talks’ in Europe it is ‘people who talk about money’? Also, I registered in your blog how the concept of competence (or ‘competenz’) had gotten you going. I have also had a few conversations about this topic with Larry Leifer in Standford. Just a couple of oservations:
There seems to be a sort of a divide between Europe – especially Northern Europe – and the USA when it comes to conceptualising of ‘what it takes to get things done’. But most likely only in the conceptualisation! More generally – and interestingly – the English speaking part of the world is much more critical towards the concept than many other countries. At least partly this may be due to the way the UK has defined their National Qualifications Framework (NQF), splitting thereunder ‘competencies’ to various performance measures (The National Qualifications Framework – factsheet
). Many UK-colleagues almost see red when hearing the word ‘competence’, I have noticed. The Australians do not seem to be too keen on the concept either (sympathetic to the UK view?) And in the US the concept – in the context relevant to this group – seems to be a bit foreign.
Whereas in the Northern Europe competence (always in singular) is a widely agreed upon and used concept (due to a language difference, though, in Finland the term translates most typically to ‘osaaminen’). It is a concept closely related to quality of and in working life – and beyond (e.g. citizenship). Just a few examples:
* The Nordic Council’s Competitivness Forum 2008 defined Future Competencies
. The report states, among other things, that “There is a consensus among the Nordic countries that we should not compete on low wages but instead focus on competence.(…)”
* Finland has built its whole R&D, innovation and future scenarios on the concept of competence. Matti can surely send illuminating references in English for those interested. Below just an example.
http://www.e.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=38589
* The Norwegians had a Competence Reform (Kompetansereform) in working life at the very end of the 1990s and a ‘Real Competence’ (Realkompetanse) project as a part of it, the latter part based solely on informal and non-formal learning. For more see
http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/kd/dok/veiledninger_brosjyrer/2001/Kompetansereformen-brosjyre-engelsk-pdf.html?id=87751
or http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/skills/hrdr/init/nor_3.htm
.
I perhaps should have responded to your Blog, Jay, rather than here…
Wishing you all
Happy Holidays
and looking forward to continuing our exhange of experiences and views in the New Year 2009.
Tarja
Dr. Tarja Tikkanen
Head of Research – Management, organisations & competence, IRIS
Senior Advisor, University of Stavanger