I recent came across this article from a 2009 senior at Ball State named Derek Wilson. Let me give you a taste:
Have you ever stopped to think about the value of your education? Most of us are in college not because of a burning passion for a subject or to seek some intellectual pursuit, but merely because we want to make more money. Making more money is and should be your motivation for attending college. Conventional wisdom says, “If you go to college, you’ll make more money.” Conventional wisdom is not always right. Going to college might be the worst decision of your life.
While I appreciate the candor of this young man, it also makes me retch a bit.
Now don’t get me wrong – I agree with some elements of what he’s saying. College, at least the 4-year version we traditionally think about, is a bad decision for some. The student who does not enjoy learning or who has always struggled with it, who does not seek to stretch themselves, who does not in any way seek to improve themselves other than to make money is probably better off going to trade school and becoming an electrician. Of course, I’d put Mr. Wilson in that same category, but his aspirations seem to include an Economics Ph.D. I suppose that’s just for the money, too.
The question of interest to me is one of selection. Would I rather hire Derek Wilson, the finance/economics double-major that does everything for the money or Sally Sue, the sociology major who just does what she loves and hopes it will all work out after graduation?
And frankly, I don’t have an answer.
This kind of behavior sounds like somewhere between achievement striving and deliberateness, both facets of conscientiousness, a personality trait that predicts job performance across jobs. While there might be a bit of a Machiavelli in his description of college motivation, I’m not sure that it would be detrimental in the average American workplace. He sounds a bit like the ideal salesman – goal in mind, he will do whatever it takes, no matter the cost (even if it means suffering through classes in which he has no “burning passion”).
And whose fault is that? Is it the educator who doesn’t instill enough passion into her teaching? Is it the parents who just “went through the motions” themselves and never gave a reason for poor Derek to care about school? Or is the natural product of a workplace where ruthlessness and competitiveness are too often rewarded? Where is the problem? Is there a problem?
And if there isn’t, why are the comments on his article so filled with vitriol?
As I mentioned before, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology is once again considering changing its name. The reasons are varied, but ultimately come down to two major themes: 1) “industrial” is an archaic term that just confuses outsiders and 2) it’s too long.
We’ve been down this road before – a name change effort just a few years ago due to what many consider to be measurement problems. You see, they just put SIOP along side all of the other choices and had people pick their favorite. The problem? No majority – everyone wanted something different. The approach this time is to first vote on the favorite alternate to SIOP, and then pit that favorite alternative against “SIOP” – a two-stage vote.
You’d think that a bunch of Ph.D.’s with extensive training in psychometric measurement could design a single vote.
But anyway, official voting has started. Here are the choices:
- The Society for Organizational Psychology (TSOP, pronounced tee-sop), on the list because no one wanted the organization to be called “sop”
- The Society for Work Psychology (SWP, which I pronounce swip)
- Society for Work and Organizational Psychology (SWOP, which I pronounce swap)
I thought it might be a useful exercise to list the other organizations and techniques that share these names, courtesy of Acronym Finder:
- SIOP
Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol
Single Integrated Operational Plan (US military)
International Society of Pediatric Oncology (SIOP, in French) - TSOP
The Sound of Philadelphia
The Society for Organic Petrology
The Speed of Pain (by Marilyn Manson) - SWP
Socialist Workers Party (uh-oh)
State Water Project
Systematic Withdrawal Plan
South Wales Police - SWOP
Sex Workers Outreach Project (Australia)
Sociology of Work Programme
Special Weapons Operating Procedure (US military again)
I think I will just let that list speak for itself.
Whatever name SIOP ultimately chooses, it’s important to remember it’s not the name that’s important – it’s what you do with it. And no number of identity crisises and the resulting votes can ever fix that.
I recently came across this article which on first glance appears to suggest mentoring as an “alternative” to rigorous, well-designed training. This strikes me as a very peculiar statement! I have always consider mentoring to simply be a type of training, perhaps one leg of a many-legged training system.
I think this viewpoint may stem from the view that mentoring is viewed as an undesirable option when faced with training design – something to be implemented when insufficient funds are available to create a comprehensive instructional platform. And that’s a shame. Informal learning is already a major force by which employees gain information. Casually turning to a coworker and asking a question, or simply writing an e-mail to the project leader, much learning at work is self-directed within pre-existing social circles, and that’s not a bad thing.
Instead of considering mentoring to be a cheap, undesirable alternative when the money dries up, why not take advantage of it? Why not design a mentoring system to get the absolute most out of the instructional resources you already have – your more experienced employees! They have both general experience (what training traditionally provides) and experience specific to your organization. That makes them a resource for training materials better than many training designers.
One of these days, I’ll detail on this blog exactly how my own automated mentoring system driven by social networking takes advantage of precisely these features, but for now, you’ll have to attend the conference where I’ll be talking about it next month. I am hopeful that a few organizations will volunteer to let my lab implement this system (for free!) so we can fine-tune it. Perhaps it could be you!