[ best ] offboarding and other flips

Another month has gone by in the blink of an eye. So it's time again to dig up the stars in my blog feeds and nominate the 'best' one for this month, the one that made me think most.

It is Jay Cross' video interview with Kevin Clark on offboarding. You will find the blog post on the Internet Time blog and the video on YouTube.



So why this one?
The fact Kevin Clark turns out to be an ex-IBMer is nice to know for me, but especially the way he 'flips' the concept of what we usually focus on (onboarding) to the neglected flip side is very intriguing. Indeed, we are moving to a work world where we might leave a job, but never a company's larger community. In fact, IBM does have a Greater IBM linked-in group for that purpose.

Based on this blog, why don't we 'flip' more of what we traditionally focus on to what might also matter? Sometimes we don't see or think about the flip side, sometimes the flip side is the elephant in the room or 'not done'. But thinking about the flip side in learning is actually very thought provoking. Here are a few:

• We always identify the new stuff people should learn. So the flip side is : make a plan or recommendation of the obsolete stuff people should UNlearn. Wouldn't that make sense in these agile times where also learning has a shorter shelve life?
• We assume learning should be for all. The flip side is to get learning to those where it will matter most. As an editorial in the paper recently said: the elephant in the room of 'engineers shortage on the labor market' is that only a few percentages of the population actually have the intellectual capacity to become an engineer. So why keep up the fluffy story that anyone can become anything if they want hard enough?
• We typically learn people how to succeed. The flip side is to learn how to fail. It can be very insightful to have a 'Titanic' workshop of how to miserably fail, kind of a 'pre-mortem' on project kick-off.
• We typically make people learn first, then give them access to experience to apply the learning. What if we flip it? You can only get learning in whatever form if you have first done it a few times.
• Leadership training is reserved for the high potential and the high shots. What if we flip it and open up leadership for all? 

Do you have other 'flip' samples?

PS
Jay has recently uploaded other similar video interviews, each lasting between 5 and 10 minutes and very recommended : interview with Marie Bjedere or learning in the workplace or Jerry Michalski