{"id":218,"date":"2018-02-20T09:13:38","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T14:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/?p=218"},"modified":"2024-07-18T14:02:07","modified_gmt":"2024-07-18T18:02:07","slug":"when-work-becomes-development-and-development-becomes-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/2018\/02\/20\/when-work-becomes-development-and-development-becomes-work\/","title":{"rendered":"When work becomes development (and development becomes work)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nick Everest, Clinical Assistant Professor of Organization and Human Resources, University at Buffalo School of Management<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Teaching is a third career for me. And, as a \u201cbaby boomer,\u201d I have plenty of experience to share with students that, I hope, brings the subject matter to life and helps them form a bridge between class materials and their practical application.<\/p>\n

I have learned to keep my reminiscences about the introduction of new technology to myself (I still recall the \u2018wow\u2019 of seeing my first fax). However, I make good use of some patterns of organizational life I have noticed over the years. Far from being antiquated, these patterns seem more relevant than ever in today\u2019s ever-changing, complex and ambiguous world of work.<\/p>\n

Here, I share two methods of personal or professional development you can use individually or with your team.<\/p>\n

Developing capabilities<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, the 70:20:10 model proposes a framework that usefully guides development investment and attention. Seventy percent of our capability is derived from experience, 20% from our interactions with influential people (a great boss or a mentor) and 10% from formal, off-the-job training and education.<\/p>\n

As I reflect on my three careers, this distribution seems sound, with the proviso that it makes sense retrospectively, which suggests many missed experiential opportunities along the way. It is important to mention, as statistician George E. P. Box said, \u201call models are wrong, but some are helpful,\u201d so the percentages are indicative but certainly helpful.<\/p>\n

Of course, these modes of development are integrated and affect one another. For example, a mentor helps his mentee extract more takeaways from a challenging assignment. Meanwhile, an Executive MBA student brings her work experience to the classroom, deriving greater value from the materials because of her background, while also contributing significantly to her fellow students\u2019 education.<\/p>\n

So, now what? How can we apply the 70:20:10 model? Use \u201creal work\u201d as an ongoing development opportunity. Encourage individuals to share their experiences and learning with one another; find opportunities for them to participate in working groups, particularly ones that cross organizational boundaries; and find opportunities to increase the amount of autonomy in a role where the individual is ready, willing and able, for example, by implementing their ideas for continuous improvement.<\/p>\n

Support your team members\u2019 development activities with coaching support and ask periodically how they are building their capability and thereby becoming more valuable in the world of work. If an individual is ready for a bigger role, find a way to make that happen (the organization chart is just a snapshot in time). If you don\u2019t, someone else will.<\/p>\n

Learning through experience<\/strong><\/p>\n

The second pattern concerns how experience translates into enhanced capability. What seemed like a process of osmosis was clarified for me when I was introduced to David Kolb\u2019s learning cycle. In practical terms, his model is simply:<\/p>\n