Professionals are Omnivores

Professionals are omnivorous in the sense that they aren't exclusive to one source of information, or subject for that matter. What does matter, is the Quality of the information, a true Professional can smell a bad idea a mile away. Yet quality is such a slippery word, almost as slippery as Professional..

This voracious need for new information, high quality information, has it's dangers though.

The Bane of a True Professional (tm), is the engaging video game. Woe be to he who suffers under the agonizing guilt of having spent four maybe six hours playing a video game. There is nothing like the crushing dreaded realization that you have just spent 24 hours nonstop, playing some hack and slash or something equally nefarious. Hunched over and gray, reeking of cigarettes, beer, mountain dew and chips. You greet the dawn only to find out it's midday, some other day. Disoriented and pale, you try and recognize yourself in the mirror, an ashen dispirited soul, with red rimmed eyes.

This I have done, I confess. don't get me wrong, I still  take a few digital laps now and then, and then, I realize, I have other things I can, not necessarily need, to do. Something else. Read. Paint. Draw. Work in the garden, play the guitar, speak with my child, my wife, my friends, my neighbors.

As Ominivore, a Professional must know their limitations

we think ...

I find that Charles Leadbeater is thought provoking in his recognition of the adaptive skills necessary to thrive in the 21st century. One of the qualities of the New Professional is their ability to be creative, and adaptive is a world that is constantly in flux, dynamic and uncertain.

The Wise Professional tm

“All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.”
William Bernbach


Professionals are Wise, in my estimation, (remember this blog is here to create dialogue not a diatribe) not in a self-important, wise-ass kind of way, rather , the kind of wise they emote is that of experience, craftiness, consideration and dare I say, Vision.

The Wise Professional tm knows, that for all practical purposes, all problems have solutions. They are secure in the knowledge that any issue they come across can be addressed, if not resolved, by consideration of the knowledge and tools they have at hand. They desire and are adept at problem solving.

The Wise Professional knows which details are important. They have perspective and a certain humility before themselves due all the mistakes they made in order to learn anything. They know that the lesson taught is not always the lesson learned, the carrot at the end of the stick is is not always the meal at the end of the journey.

The Wise Professional may approach a problem and resolve it with either, utterly practical or strikingly counter intuitive, solutions yet they are not Quixotic.

Can you think of any Wise professionals? Please leave a comment.

Dan Pink on Motivation

Jim Collins on Motivation

The BORG are not Professional

First of all I'm pretty sure, but I might be wrong, they don't get paid for being BORG. However they are Process driven.
The BORG don't care about truth, and especially truth in advertising. The have a very low budget for that I'm sure.
The BORG are not Polite, and at first what may seem like Confidence is actually an insatiable drive to meet their QPH (quantity per hour) of BORG recruitment.

This does not mean that The BORG don't have an upside to their Process Driven mania. Not at all. They are efficient and have very little turn over. There is no Personal Conversation at work which improves their QPH immensely. They never need to be re-directed by there Team Leader to stay on task. They dress as if they mean business. I would imagine that one would rarely see a BORG dressed in flip-flops.

There is no place in the BORG community for Sarcasm or Passive/Aggressive behavior. If a BORG questions why they are doing something or complains that a supervisor was rude to them, They merely get a larger chunk of there brain replaced by a higher quality Bluetooth inspired transmitter relay. The Borg rely on being very Modular.

Now, some may interpret my evaluation of The BORG as being a thinly veiled critique(by way of analogy)to how the Business world works.
However, I cannot say for certain that there are some Business Owners who do not wake up every morning a little sad and depressed over the fact that the BORG have not visited us yet.

My intention with this blog is not to question the validity of highly reputable and proven business models. My intention is to improve the experience of PEOPLE,( i.e. humans)who work in the world of business.

Undoubtedly I am out of line and uneducated to the fine details of how a business is run due to the fact I am for the most part an Autodidact, and not worthy of having any valid insights that may enhance, even a little, the quality of the Business world. I am no threat to the status quo.

The Word

"`That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
`When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, `I always pay it extra.' "
 -Alice in Wonderland

Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE. 
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
 -Princess Bride

To Profess: To affirm openly; declare or claim, To practice as a profession or claim knowledge of...and the definitions go on and on. I find it interesting that to profess is not the opposite of confess.

So, Professional is not the opposite of confessional.One is never lauded at being confessional, but people are frequently accused of being unprofessional.

I find that in my exploration of the term Professional I have been laboring under the delusion that it is, somehow, synonymous with principled which it clearly is not. There are Professional thieves, liars and drug lords. One can be a Professional, well, anything as long as they can make a living at it. So when someone says," Oh, he/she was very professional", I now take it to mean the exhibited a degree of skill.However, skill alone, a good person does not make.

Perhaps this blog is about something else entirely.

I had wanted to believe that Professionalism included the attributes of politeness, clarity and good intentions. Perhaps I spent too much time with the Fairy Dust in the early 70's.

I guess I am an Idealist. I can't help but think that it is not a bad thing to be an Idealist, but perhaps it is an impractical attribute to have when trying to thrive in the Business World. Idealism is an expensive commodity that many choose not to invest in.

Many businesses find themselves professing to a Neiman Marcus Ideal  but have a Wal-mart mentality.They want to declare Rolls Royce affinities but meet a Ford Pinto production schedule.

As a closing note, a quote by Eric Hoffer ,
"In a time of drastic change, it is the Learners who inherit the future.The Learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."