We owe Peter Drucker a complete picture of the new knowledge worker, able to take advantage of the tools and advantages of the Information Society for lifelong learning, and for the consequent technical and scientific progress, and social well-being. To a greater or lesser extent, almost all of us are already knowledge workers, although, for some, professional demands reach the creation of new knowledge and innovation.
University students now enter the world of work knowing that they have to continue learning throughout their lives, and that they have to contribute to the generation of new knowledge, for the benefit of the competitiveness and prosperity of their organizations. Perhaps one could speak not only of knowledge workers, but also of learning workers, or lifelong learners.
Let's try to make lifelong learning meaningful; it is not just a matter of frequently following classroom or online courses, or participating in other orchestrated training activities. Perhaps lifelong learning starts, above all, from an attitude; of a proactive disposition to learn daily from what we do and observe, and to look to different sources for the knowledge we need for the short and long term: from the thirst for knowledge. If some ambitious managers are driven by the thirst for power, the new knowledge workers seem to be driven by the thirst for knowledge.
And one would also say that the idea of continuous learning, associated with the knowledge worker, also means permanent teaching, that is, always making our knowledge available to others. And also that it means unlearning what is no longer valid… And that this new situation demands specific skills in the worker's profile.
Deployment of lifelong learning
Perhaps -although simplifying-, in companies and organizations, the internal expression of the Information Society is the so-called “knowledge management”, understood as maximum use, individual and collective, of the intellectual resources of individuals. These resources must also be interpreted broadly: knowledge, and intelligence to increase, generate and apply them. If we refer to knowledge as the ability to act, let us not forget that to act fully well, with high performance, we also need operational and personal skills, attitudes, strengths…
The desired high performance of managers and workers requires complete professional profiles beyond theoretical knowledge, and, therefore, lifelong learning also points to social skills, beliefs, values, behaviors… Remember the reader that we are trying to extract all the meaning of "lifelong learning", or "lifelong learning"; it seems to require us, for now, an effort of multidimensional self-knowledge to see what we lack (and what we have left over) in the skills profile.
So, rather than looking at the methods, which sometimes seem to work like red herrings or smoke screens… I'll put it another way: in addition to looking at the methods, and especially in e-learning, we should better determine our training and development needs, in the short and medium term, in terms of knowledge and also with regard to the rest of the necessary skills. But what skills do we need?
In Spain, large companies developed their competency models in the late 1990s, almost concurrently with the implementation of e-learning. Of these models, I would like to submit to the reader's consideration a group of five families of transversal competences, closely related to each other and to the times we live in, and in which we can find several pending subjects:
- Generic Cognitive Intrapersonal Conversational Informational Emotional
It is not necessary to insist that they can be called otherwise, that there are other families and that they overlap very visibly; but I bring them here because I believe that their development - the development of the 30 or 40 specific competences that I am talking about - should be synergistic and parallel, where necessary.
They are transversal, and, above all, in line with the neosecular panorama that we are drawing. It would be of little use, for example, if we mastered the techniques of allegation before a client and in defense of our products, if we lacked the necessary empathy; It would be of little use for us to acquire new knowledge if we did not know how to communicate and apply it; Perhaps the analysis would be of little use, without the synthesis, or without the systemic perspective of the organization…
But also or by the way, what do we put these soft skills and other hard skills at the service of? From the achievement of business profits? From the development and prosperity of the organization? Of the best knowledge management? Of the quality of life in the company? From innovation? From customer satisfaction? From the contribution to the common good in society?… From all this? Let us be, in each case, aware of it.
We must be very sure of our objectives and learning content, but we must also know the most suitable methods to follow. E-learning seems to reign over all of them, and I already submit to the reader some reflections in this regard.
E-learning and e-learnings
I have recently found in different forums a “simple” definition of e-learning that has seemed very open to me. It is identified with any learning process supported or sustained by ICT, so that traditional distance training seems to fit here, if we make, for example, a phone call to the tutor, or use email for inquiries. And it is also possible to do any self-study initiative using, for example, the Internet.
It seems good to agree on a common meaning for the concept of e-learning as a learning method, but perhaps, with such a broad one, we do not know exactly what we are talking about in each case.
It may be necessary to speak simply of learning, or of lifelong learning, because today it is difficult to undertake any learning process without making use of ICT; It is even difficult to live without making use of ICT, and in this regard it is not surprising that there is talk of digital or technological literacy of citizens…
ICTs are so close that we cannot avoid them (nor do we want to). We are talking about information and communication technologies; we are talking specifically about the supports of information and the media or methods of communication. Communication or telecommunication? Well, even though we are in the same room, projection screens are already becoming common to better see the speaker, not to mention microphones and other electronic devices in the room, including PCs.
Certainly, some experts, especially from the university world, complete this general definition of e-learning by saying that ICT liberates teachers and students from space-time conditioning factors, so that it would be a distance training in which, thanks to technologies, the student is not alone. I myself, in the 90s, was already saying (writing) that e-learning allowed us to go from learning “alone” to learning “in solidarity”; but the fact is that one can also practice e-learning alone and even at home…
Where am I going to stop?
What, in fact, is the element that distinguishes the traditional formation from the new formation? Is it the use of ICT, is it the demands of lifelong learning, or is it the attitude and behavior of the individual? Is it the learning modality or the circumstances that determine it? I believe that, in the business world, there is a new proactive attitude of the individual - of the individual who is aware of their needs - for which ICT and e-learning come in handy.
In the company, learning must be centered on the individual, it must be autotelic, and it must follow an intrinsic motivation; All this is different from regulated education, in which, in general, the process is centered on the teacher, learning is exotica (we study to pass rather than to learn) and motivation is extrinsic. But, having already formulated this idea, I would like to know better what we are talking about in each case, when doing e-learning.
In every conversation about e-learning we should know if we are talking about “e-learning-interactive online courses”, or “e-learning-pills”, or “e-learning-learn as you can and ask questions”, or of "e-learning-classical distance training and contacts by e-mail", or of "e-learning-self-learning", or of "e-learning-self service", or "e-learning-guguelizado", or of “E-learning mixed with the classroom”, or “voluntary e-learning”, or “e-learning by imposition of the company's training department, and coercion through a credit system”… Then, knowing what we mean Yes, we could perhaps talk about all those things that we have been talking about: the possibilities, the advantages, the disadvantages, the myths, the virtues, the capital sins, the perversions, the errors, the punctures, etc., of e-learning.
The "lifelong e-learner"
We return to the figure of the knowledge and learning worker, the protagonist of the so-called “knowledge age”. It would seem that, within the business world, the figure of the “knowledge worker” that Peter Drucker had told us so much about is consolidating; but this same figure, without questioning it and as we said at the beginning, we can identify it with the “learning worker”.
Universities should launch “learning workers” or “lifelong e-learners” into the world of work, capable of proactively managing with all available multimedia information, to the benefit of their professional results.
I end by submitting an approach to this “lifelong e-learner”, understanding the expression as “knowledge worker, user of ICT for lifelong learning”. We would be before a worker "10" who:
- He has already reached a visible degree of personal and professional development. Handles ICT fluently. Has sufficient informational skills (search, interpretation, evaluation, etc). You know what to learn, both in knowledge and in skills and strengths. He is proactive in learning, and in this regard he uses the means at his disposal. You have a certain degree of autonomy in your work. Also practice team learning, in physical and virtual environments. He conveniently applies his knowledge, his thinking and his feeling, in his daily actions. Pursue improvement and innovation. It subordinates its particular interests to the groups.
The reader can complete the list, because, more than a top or top, it could also be seen as a minimum, in terms of permanent learning and development. Obviously, the debate is still open about new workers, new managers and the new needs for individual and collective learning and development, and this writer did not intend but to contribute to it (to the debate), and even encourage it (sometimes from provocative positions), to receive new and more advanced ideas about it. I will continue learning, from the conviction that we can all be more effective in our daily performance (and even, at the same time, happier).
