Practicing Lifelong Learning

Mr. John Meredith’s successful career, in which he held a variety of positions, makes him the perfect presenter on lifelong learning. He believes lifelong learning is relevant to an audience of any age, even students. The continuing need to learn arises from the unprecedented rate of technology growth, the constant introduction of new tools into industry, and competitive pressures both domestic and global.

One of the biggest excuses for not increasing your knowledge, skills, and abilities is lack of time. I agree completely because I use that excuse myself. A bit of advice is to stay organized. Organization leads to efficiency, which in turn leaves more time for learning activities. Everybody is responsible for creating their own professional development plan and making it a priority. Mr. Meredith presented a process on planning for growth.

1. Establish your goals both short and long term
2. Do an honest assessment of your knowledge, skills, and capabilities. Talk to your boss, coworkers, and others to learn where they see you and your strengths
3. Determine gaps that need to be filled and identify sources of improvement
4. Carry out your plan
5. Periodically update your plan

Reading is one of the best ways to learn. You can choose different methods of reading depending on the information you are looking for. Skimming is useful to answer the questions who, what, when, or where. Scanning is useful to answer how or why. And studying can be used to answer how or why in-depth. Other ways to learn include surveying documents, asking questions, holding interviews, taking notes, mind-maps, and active listening.

Mr. Meredith’s other thoughts:

• Find a mentor, someone you are comfortable with and you can learn from
• Everyone should have a desire to learn and form learning habits
• Share your knowledge and skills
• Write papers, present and conferences
• Teaching and mentoring (where you are the teacher because you learn from your students)
• Organize educational events in your workplace or for your IEEE Section, Chapter, or Society

I really enjoyed Mr. Meredith’s presentation. He gave a lot of good tips and advice. I particularly like his idea of becoming a mentor or teacher. Teaching and explaining ideas and concepts to others is a great self assessment tool and a great way to learn things you may not know yourself.

Maintaining Your Employability in Any Economy

This session was very interactive – the audience had voting devices to answer questions posed by the speaker, Nigel Bristow. Bristow is the founder and president of Targeted Learning, a company dedicated to helping organizations fully engage the talents and energies of their people.

Bristow’s first question to the audience was: Which of the following is most predictive of your long-term career success?

1. Grades in college
2. IQ
3. Conflict management skills
4. Learning agility
5. Communication skills

The majority of the audience answered communication skills, but the correct answer was learning agility (39 percent of the audience answered correctly).

What is learning agility? According to Bristow, there are four cornerstones to learning ability:

1. Constantly looking for new challenges that will teach you new things.
2. Seeking feedback and criticism and being open to it.
3. Sitting back and reflecting on how things are going and how things have gone. It’s also asking yourself what you’ve learned from a specific experience, what you can do differently, and what you did to lead to that outcome.
4. Developing the discipline to change habits and learn new ones.

In order to stay employable, focus on growing your abilities and motivation and don’t get caught in your comfort zone, explained Bristow. You have to think in the following way to be employable: My career is a one-person business, my employer is my customer, and making my customer successful is job #1.

Bristow also described the five career stages that drive employability:

1. Acquiring knowledge
2. Applying knowledge
3. Creating knowledge
4. Sharing knowledge
5. Leveraging knowledge

During his presentation, Bristow asked several audience-participation questions and provided the audience with many anecdotal stories and a lot of advice. One thought that will stick with me was the following quote.

“Employability begins with staying focused on what we can control and not wasting a lot of energy on what we can’t control,” said Bristow.

Amplifying Your Voice in Washington

Russell Harrison motivated an audience of 40 to work with their elected leaders to change public policy. As the Senior Legislative Representative for Grassroots Affairs for IEEE-USA, Harrison is responsible for helping IEEE members in the U.S. interact with, and ultimately influence, elected officials.

He began his presentation by presenting a real-life example of a state legislature that was considering adding a six percent sales tax to the sale of computer services, which meant any service involving the installation, use or upgrade of a computer. What would you do? Harrison’s goal is to help IEEE U.S. members deal with such a situation.

“How can we possibly impact what happens in Washington?” Harrison asked the audience. “As engineers, how can you make a difference?”

Harrison’s key advice – reach out to your congressperson! “Congress wants to hear from real people – they want to hear from you! However, they don’t have time to come find you to talk to them. If you make the effort to come to them, they’re ready to listen,” explained Harrison. “Be loud and stand up for what you believe in.”

Congressional staff persons were recently surveyed about what had “some” or “a lot” of influence over their boss’s vote. Ninety-nine percent said a visit from a constituent, 96 percent said a letter from a constituent, 93 percent said a lobbyist, 65 percent said form letters. A visit is most impactful because if you take the time and effort to travel to Washington, they know you mean it.

A letter can let your congressperson know your views, but if you’re going to send a written letter, send it by e-mail, Harrison said. What happens when you send the e-mail? A college student will read it, sort it by issue into a folder, and send you a response. The e-mail will be read by a senior staffer when a decision needs to be made on how to vote or the folder contains seven e-mails. Most audience members (including myself) were shocked that the number was so small!

Harrison’s final advice was to e-mail your elected official frequently – build a relationship with them! It may take five e-mails about different issues before you can invite your elected official to a section meeting and they may actually attend.

The IEEE-USA government affairs staff members in Washington are working on several issues for 2009: Stimulus Bill, alternative energy legislation, energy distribution and efficiency, patent reform, K-12 education, immigration reform, appropriations, and healthcare.

A few resources:
1. Legislative Action Center
2. Washington Fly-Ins (Come to Washington to speak with your elected officials)
3. CARE

Innovating Your Career

Peggy Hutcheson, Ph.D. talked today about what it takes to stay ahead of the competition. She started the talk with pointing out what is different about the engineering profession today - Almost everything! Comments from the audience expressed that engineers once read technical publications, dealt directly with customers; are now expected to work in interdisciplinary teams, collaborate with engineers across the country and world, be connected 24/7 through email; and one must keep up with new technology. The pre-conference survey results align with these comments; the engineering profession is changing. On the upside, the small business is driving business. Small businesses are more innovative and produce 13 times more patents per employee patenting firm.


Mrs. Mutcheson went on to explain that careers are shifting, talents are commoditized and she stressed integrative thinking. How do we respond to this career shift? Self definition plays a key role in innovation! One should not ask am I innovative, rather one should ask how I am innovative? We all have an equal potential for being innovative; however, nne must develop a innovation strategy - a different way of thinking. There are four styles of thinking: visioning, exploring, modifying and experimenting; each with their own springboard questions that stimulate innovation.

To make the styles of innovation session a learning experience, she divided the audience into 4 groups and assigned a thinking style. After 5 minutes of idea generation the groups reported 2 to 3 innovative ideas about job retention and career shifting. The brainstorming experience was well received. The next topic of the session was career derailers, which are beliefs (attitude), a failure to build relationships (interpersonal skills) and having a narrow focus. The final topic was maintaining career competitiveness. Know your brand! Know your brand! Know your brand! The other suggestions were network in new ways, know the market, know the competition and build your legacy. The presentation generated a good discussion until the end of the session!