Thursday, February 25, 2010

Homo Competens – learning, doing, sharing

I met Bert de Coutere at Online Educa in December. He chaired the Battle of the Bloggers in which I participated.

Recently Bert sent me a copy of his intriguingly titled Homo Competens (Beta Book, 2009), an exploration of competence and how humans acquire this. I only got so far as page 31, when I encountered the following analysis by Bert of the stages in the building of competence:

Learning If you are mainly learning, you are an apprentice. You are building knowledge, skills and behaviours.
Doing If you are mainly doing, you are a practitioner. You are building experience.
Sharing If you are mainly sharing, you are a master. You are building reputation.

 

Bert makes clear that these phases overlap to some extent. After all, we're going to be 'doing some doing' at every point in our careers and also hopefully some learning and sharing. But what Bert's analysis did for me was to clarify to some extent where I find myself at this late stage in my career. I've done my fair share of learning and doing and I'd like to think I've achieved some success at both. But now my principal activities as a consultant seem to be writing, presenting, teaching and advising, which I suppose collectively put me fairly and squarely within the sharing stage. I can't stop learning and I love to do some doing when I get the chance, but my primary role in life is now as a sharer. So if I sometimes wonder why I'm spending quite so much time writing and talking (and often for free) then I'm only doing what comes naturally. I know because Bert told me so.

4 comments:

  1. Clive, I really enjoyed reading Bert's book. In fact, I reformatted my own Working Smarter to the shape of Homo Competens. He wrote the book as a hobby project!

    jay

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  2. Cody Hack9:40 PM

    Clive, This book seems like it would be very informational to stage the point of the game that you are at. At this point in my life I feel that I am in the practicioner stage. I have learned the industry, and now I am just trying to build experience. Obviously the cliche "learn something new everyday" applies, but experience will land me a job. Thank you for the suggestion on the book.

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  3. Hi Clive,
    The idea of apprentice, practitioner, master is one I truly support. And I really like how Bert has defined them in the context of Learning, Doing, Sharing. Briliantly simple. Now I need to get on Amazon and get the book.
    Cheers!
    Brent

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  4. And we're all glad you'll keep on sharing! I said it before and I'll say it again: Learn, Do, Share! (And shameless as I am: there's more on homocompetens.com)

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