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Re: In a spin.

Re: In a spin.2011-02-21T14:50:39+00:00

The Forums Forums The Workplace Struggling In a spin. Re: In a spin.

#95684

ADDled
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Post count: 121

Why should we “be” anything at all when we can just “be”?

Yah, I know, a Zen riddle wrapped on a koan…

The workplace has changed, and possible not for the better, I think. What I used to believe is that you studied and worked hard to learn chosen profession. You became an expert with certain “perfect knowledge” of you work. A specialist, I suppose.

Recently, though, I’ve come to believe that knowledge has been “commodified”, a thing to buy and sell or use when organizational need requires it. The skill is all about managing the knowledge of knowledge: how to access and deploy knowledge without actually possessing it.

If knowledge is required, the organization simply acquires only as much knowledge it needs to perform what is required. No more. That would be a waste of capital, a waste of resources. In other words, sub-contract everything out as possible.

What this means careerwise, is that the speciality is now about doing as many functions within an organization as possible. You don’t have to be good at any one particular thing, but be able to do a lot of little things “just well enough” on an ad hoc basis.

To me, this sounds a lot like multi-tasking (which doesn’t really exist – you’re just re-focusing rapidly) and you’d thing organizations would be beating a path to hire people like ourselves for doing this sort of work. But I don’t think that really happens.

All the stories I read here about problems in the workplace relating to ADHD have revealed to me that we still aren’t being accepted for what we can do. We are constantly reminded about what we can’t do. Mostly because organizations aren’t really equipped to deal with a complete change of corporate culture when hiring people who have different cognitive abilities. That still remains the barrier. And while the organizations understand the need for a change in how work is done, decisions are still made by people who are, for the most part, linear thinkers, and stand to loose a lot of control they’ve spend years accumulating, to risk it by hiring a new kind of knowledge worker. The kind organizations know little about, but are afraid to learn about them. The ones they may not be able to control.

What kills us is the routine stuff organizations impose on people in terms of paperwork, dubious and questionable corporate policies and the general “dumbing down” of intelligence. Those things that we as ADHD people aren’t sometimes too good at.

A career now is about being, and doing, as many things to an organization as possible – generalist. To learn how to lean quickly is what’s going to be needed.

Hope this helps…and good luck.

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