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I experienced a great OU Res-School at Lane End Conference Centre, Buckinghamshire, over the weekend just gone. I caught-up with fellow B830 tutor group members and some previous module colleagues. I was a member of Richard’s tutor group and also a member of a randomly generated learning set group formed to work through all our EBI proposals.

This EBI bullet-proofing process required us to map who we perceived as main EBI stakeholders on our power-interest matrices, define our EBI with the key issues outlined, and explore potential areas of theory relevant to our chosen EBIs.

I have decided to focus on a personal and very individually-focused EBI. I feel that I need to analyse my skill set, family commitments and employment opportunities in detail and work out the best career pathway for me. The best way of doing this, I believe, is to audit my work experience and competencies with a career coach. I have already had one session with David at C2 Careers and I already have some action points to work on following the meeting.

At the moment, I feel a bit like Dorothy traversing the Yellow Brick road to the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz. But instead of one road to Emerald City I have numerous choices and crossroads! I recognise that too much choice is a nice problem to have, but it complicates the process markedly. It doesn’t help when everyone has an opinion on the best way forward depending on their interest in my background and skillset.

Right now I feel that I need to follow a very divergent process in order to explore and narrow down my choices. I can see this process of self-discovery being extremely iterative as I work through my options and converge on a suitable pathway. I think I’m likely to follow the Buffalo 6-stage creative problem solving process during my EBI. I already feel that I am at stage two of the divergent fact-finding part: discovering suitable work structures and work opportunities for me following the completion of the OU MBA.

As part of my career audit I think that I can use the CV Plus method mentioned by Dealtry (2004) in his article The Savvy Learner. He believes that existing and prospective managers need to establish where they are in their learning-to-learn journey. He argues that CV Plus is a diagnostic self-appraisal tool that provides a framework of six core areas (Family, Location, Education, Work Experience, Social Activity, and Political Opinion) in order to help an individual work through their past learning experience and ideology. By mapping the learning progress from birth to adulthood, without thinking of a particular job or industry influencing the self-analysis, it is hoped that an individual can understand how they arrived at their present career path.

Dealtry believes it is important that an individual knows three main things about themselves in relation to their learning journey: their learning styles profile, learning diagnostics and team profile. He states that knowing the learning self leads to the recognition in differences in behaviour in those people we work with and live with. But this insight needs to be managed within the context of the influences that affect an individual’s learning development such as job context, culture, methods of learning etc and their own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Fundamentally, Dealtry argues that an individual’s learning-to-learn journey is about managing all the stakeholders involved in the learning experience: the learner, the organisation, and also work colleagues, family and learning providers. We do not learn in a vacuum. Furthermore, how an individual shifts his/her world-view paradigm after discovering new ideas can markedly impact others and the way they are perceived by them. It’s important to recognise the changes in you and the positive or negative impact it may have on your personal or work relationships.

References:

Dealtry R. (2004) “Professional Practice: The Savvy Learner”, The Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol.16 no 1, Emerald Group Publishing, pp 101-109.