16 (Process-11) Repeat all or part of the process

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An Employee Workshop for Aspiring Experts

Unconventional Workshop 16

Repeat all or part of the process

Individual work-process 11

1) Foster curiosity
2) Initiate activity
3) Gain relevant information
4) Discover possibilities
5) Strategize
6) Commit to a project
7) Create ideas
8) Realize ideas
9) Test ideas, find success or failure
10) Use failure as a platform for new and better ideas
11) Repeat part or all of the process
12) Eventually, find achievement
Bonus – Ultimately, gain some level of mastery

Work experience refers to the skills gained by actually doing work, measured over one’s entire career.
Work-journey is the human experience behind the work being performed; measured from a day-to-day perspective.

Work-journey – the human experience behind work
Humans like nice things. Especially in the 1980s, purchasing and possessing shiny, new, trendy, fashionable, desirable consumer goods became more than common practice, it was an integral part of a booming economy. People spent their hard earned money on high-end consumer goods; not only to enjoy, but to show off. Today, people still enjoy nice things and just about everything manufactured comes in a high-end version that is differentiated in a way that shows off its value.

A more recent trend, is the focus on the human experience. A vacation package, for example, can include themes and activities that stimulate sights, sounds, tastes and feelings. The human experience also translates to consumer goods. Car commercials made today are more apt to focus on an off-road experience, for example, than the Corinthian leather of a past era. Prioritizing the human experience does not exclude showing off. The status symbols of today include social media posts documenting experiences.

Enjoying one’s work is nothing new, however, in an age when human experiences often have a higher value than personal possessions, it only makes sense to put a high priority on one’s human experience as it related to a career. Most companies are well aware of this and frequently sponsor corporate culture initiatives designed to improvement job satisfaction. This is the key purpose behind company events.

Work-journey is different than job satisfaction. It is the part of job satisfaction that pertains to the actual work being performed. Unlike job satisfaction, one’s individual work-journey filters out the physical work environment, the co-workers, the quality of tools available, the boss, the corporate culture and the company events. Work-journey asks one simple question; what is the human experience behind the work one performs? Is the work Intriguing? Is there exploration? Are there discoveries? Are obstacles satisfactorily hurtled? Is it rewarding? Or, was the work laborious? Was it tedious? Was there clock watching? Was it frustrating? Was it boring?

Unconventional Expert have the opportunity to create for themselves a fulfilling work-journey. Their work-journey is their individual work-process in motion. It is their mission, path, exploration, rabbit hole, experimentation. It is a real-life drama, telling a story of ambitions, activities, plots, understandings, misunderstandings, challenges, success, failure, overcoming failure and accomplishments.

Because the work experience is associated with one’s work history and accumulation of skills,
we use the term work-journey to describe one’s work, within the context of human experience.
Work-journey is different than job satisfaction, as it only pertains to the work being performed.

Repeatable work habits
Whether it be work or play, good habits play an important part of our lives. Repeating daily routines and scheduling repetitive activities creates stability and efficiencies. One way to advance ourselves is to continually develop our positive habits for incremental improvements. If the person who walks one mile every day increases their distance by one half mile, they will cover an additional 182.5 miles in one year.

In an often unstructured world, good habits bring us good structure. From a psychological point of view, good habits bring us comfort. There are few surprises and the activity involved is anticipated. The results of good habits are generally cumulative and cumulative results reinforce good habits.

Staying true to good habits will always be a challenge. It is important to respect the latitude we give to good habits. We can adopt them fairly easily, but they can also go away as quickly as they start. As automatic as habits become, there is no excuse for falling asleep at the wheel.

Know thy habits, good and bad.

We need to pay close attention to our habits:

• Respect our own acceptance and limitations regarding habits in general.

• Note realistic and positive results that might be expected from new habits.
• Start small.
• Commit to habits with a strong commitment.
• Monitor the results of habits and compare to expectations.
• Consider small and realistic improvements, once habits are automatic and results are positive.
• Consider subtractive habits for the elimination or reduction of bad habits.

Repeatable work habits and behavioral habits
When we think of good habits, we rarely differentiate them into the categories of work and behavior. When we think of habits that stem from behavior, we might think of a single event. If someone hears a sneeze, for example, they might feel the need to say “God bless you.” This shows kindness, and is a good habit that shows good behavior. If that person is in a crowded movie theater and the person sitting in front of them sneezes, they might have to restrain themselves from saying anything, as it would add to the disruption. This example of a behavioral habit looks more like a knee jerk reaction, similar to an actual knee jerk, when the doctor hits it to test reflexes. Repeatable work habits are more voluntary and they do not relate to a single event or a knee jerk reaction.

Repeatable work habit differences

Repeatable work habits are a perfect fit for the type of work we describe as structured, repetitive, task-oriented and process-driven. Unskilled to semi-skilled (non-expert) employment positions are filled with workers who are adaptable and capable with repeatable work habits. Organizations that host these types of positions will have company-process in place. This company-process will closely follow the work that needs to be completed.

Some traditional institution-guided expert positions require a high level of repeatable work habits. This work is easily repeatable for these professionals and skilled trades workers, however, there will be years of development that lead up to these skills. From a distance, these repeatable work habits will look consistent with the established industry that governs them, however, every complex skill is unique to the expert performing it. Complex repeatable work habits also come with increased risk and responsibility. A doctor can harm a patient, a machinist can scrap a $10,000 piece of metal, an accountant can lose funds for a company and an electrician can compromise everyone’s safety. With risk and responsibility, these professions and skilled trades have built-in checks, balances and backup plans. Because traditional institution-guided experts can also be Unconventional Experts, it is possible for them to expand their repeatable work habits into unconventional directions.

Unconventional Experts create their own individual work-process. Because of this, the practice of converting a process into a repeatable work habit is not as obvious. Unconventional Experts typically do this without thinking about it or realizing what they have done. Once they find a methodology that can consistently take unstructured work and make it structured (for them), they will adopt it as a repeatable work habit. Unconventional Experts are highly opinionated when it comes to their methodologies and repeatable work habits. When one creates their own way of doing things, without any organizational or industry guidelines, they have an intimate connection that is not easily arguable.

From a process perspective

Here, we can see what a repeatable work habit looks like in comparison to an Unconventional Expert’s individual work-process:

Unconventional Expert Individual work-process
1) Foster curiosity
2) Initiate activity
3) Gain relevant information
4) Discover possibilities
5) Strategize
6) Commit to a project
7) Create ideas
8) Test ideas
9) Fail
10) Use failure as a platform for new and better ideas
11) Repeat part or all of the process
12) Eventually, find achievement
Bonus – Ultimately, gain some level of mastery

Repeatable work habit as a process
1) Commit to realistic and positive work habit
2) Initiate activity
3) Repeat
4) Make incremental improvements
5) repeat (eventually … find improvements)

Unconventional Experts thrive in environments that are unstructured, however, all workers need to perform structured work and structured work benefits from repeatable work habits. Everyone needs to develop repeatable work habits to work through necessary tasks.