Summary Learning Profile (as at 28 December 2018)

Find following a summary, with links to more detail, of my personal learning and development activities from 2013 onwards. These are listed in reverse chronological sequence.

Ongoing Activities

My main web presences

I can be found on the web at the following locations:-

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

Twitter Chats

I am an an active participant in the following 1 hour Twitter chats during the week (and, if I can't take part live, I almost always catchup and input/reply later) as well as doing Wakelets for each one (Wakelet is a content curation service that enables the user to create a set of content items, in this case a set of Tweets):-

• #leadershour: on leadership (a fave subject of mine)
• #LDnights: on Learning & Development (L&D) and Organisational Development (OD) – “meets” on the 1st Tuesday of the month
• #PKMchat: on personal knowledge management (this is the closest I get to a “home” team) – as of Q2 2018, this chat is on hiatus
• #ESNchat: on enterprise social networks, digital workplaces and digital transformation. I co-hosted this chat on:
• 8 June 2017 – Contribute and Create Value by Working Out Loud (see the tweets)
• 30 November 2017 – ESN Procurement 101 (see the tweets).
• #LDinsight: as #LDnights above

I also curate tweets from a majority of the chats above and also other chats where the subject is of interest using the Wakelet service. See this index page for all my Wakelet curated set of tweets. Some of these were migrated from Storify to Wakelet when the Storify service ended, I worked with the developers at Wakelet to test their migration utility and was able to migrate 200 Storify files to Wakelet in 3 batches over the Christmas holiday in 2017.

Facebook Groups

I am an active member of the Working Out Loud Facebook group often contributing detailed posts on the “how-to” of Working Out Loud circles as well as answering people’s questions.

Specific One-Off Activities

My Year of Reading 2019 (January to December 2019)

In December 2018, for the 2nd year, I  compiled a reading list for me to work through in the following year. There are 12 books and I am looking to read and apply each book with fellow travellers using Workplace by Facebook as the collaboration platform.

See My Year of Reading 2019 blog post for the book details including an intro video to each book and my rationale for including the books on my list.

Apply: My One Word for 2019 (January to December 2019

In December 2018,  I chose the word “Apply” as my third One Word for a year instead of a series of New Year’s Resolutions. I previously chose “Focus” as my One Word for 2018 and “Discipline” as my One Word for 2017. In 2018, I will be doing this in parallel with Fiona Michaux (Brussels, Belgium) after she invited me to do this in 2018. Her word was “Energy”.

This post explains the background. In summary, I want to apply more proactively and specifically the learning that I do.

Facilitator and a Member of a Working Out Loud Circle – my 6th Circle (January – March 2019)

At time of writing (28 December 2018), I have recruited 4 people to join with me in another circle. This time I am looking to do a themed circle covering “Leading Geographically Dispersed Teams”, employee engagement in those teams and collaboration. We will be doing a standard circle but seeking to have individual goals relating to the subject theme. Another learning adventure …

See the invitation for more details.

These are the members of the circle:

Read “Reinvention Roadmap: Break The Rules To Get The Job You Want & Career You Deserve ”; Liz Ryan (September – December 2018)

This was a mammoth book that I read and applied as my WOL circle goal in my 4th circle. In 25 chapters of the book, I responded to 213 exercises. My notes from the book and those exercise responses can be found in this blog post. I have never before done so much self-reflection.

My view is that this book is relevant for:-

• Every worker, manager, leader etc
• This book is an ideal primer on how to manage your own career and is relevant to people of all ages seeking employment
• The book gives you language and processes to become your own career manager
• In an amazing way, I found the book helping me view my day job in new ways and helping me to be more efficient and effective
• People wanting to explore becoming freelance and/or doing consultancy assignments
• The book encourages a process in how this can be explored and become a reality
• Those with an interest in building human workplaces
• Lots of the book covers the modern workplace and what helps and hinders that workplace becoming human in practical ways
• HR professionals
• In many ways I saw the book as a wake-up call to HR professionals to inform them of the detrimental impact of old-style recruitment processes
• Life and career coaches – both people doing that as a full-time role and those who give career advice as one of many services that they provide
• The book contains processes and exercises that such coaches would find helpful to compare with their existing services to see whether they could improve their practice by adopting some of these processes and exercises

I highly recommend this book to everyone and would suggest that you do the exercises and ideally that you find 3-5 others to do the book with you.

Mentoring Catherine Carr (an Executive Coach, Canada) to participate in and host her first ever Twitter Chat (October 2018)

I stumbled over Catherine (based in Canada) while recruiting for the “Reinvention Roadmap” book club via the list of certified Designing Your Life coaches. Catherine joined the Workplace by Facebook community that I manage. As a result of my invitation to put herself forward to host a #SelfCareWeekly Twitter Chat, I produced a Twitter Chats 101 blog post and worked with Catherine on a running order for the chat scheduled for Tuesday 30 October 2018 on the theme of “We need resilience programmes not just well-being programmes”. Catherine will be hosting with me in support.

Panellist at a Lloyds Banking Group Working Out Loud Circles Networking Event & My Top 10 Graphics Telling My WOL/WOL Circles Story so far (Halifax, UK; October 2018)

While preparing for being part of a panel in a WOL Circles gathering at Lloyds Banking Group in Halifax in the north of England in the UK less than 10 miles from my home in Bradford on Thursday 18 October, I had a pre-session chat with the organiser. Following on from that, I decided to prepare myself by doing a variant of one of the Week 9 "Encourage more original contributions" circle guide exercises "Your Top Ten". I collated a "“My Top 10” Graphics telling my WOL / WOL Circles Story so far ... ". My role on the panel was to provide an external perspective to a primarily internal audience.

Slide deck

This post summarises my experience of taking part in the event.

Facilitator and a Member of a Pilot Working Out Loud Self-Care Circle – my 5th Circle (September 2018 to February 2019)

I volunteered to be part of a pilot of a new type of Working Out Loud Circle that John Stepper organised. These are majoring on self-care. The majority of these are virtual and John allocated people to each circle.

These run for 6 months with a monthly call and each month we each do a specific daily self-care practice so we will practice 5 different self-care practices. Unlike traditional circles there is no personal goal that runs for the duration of the circle.

For more information on these circles see John’s blog post.

Facilitator and a Member of a Working Out Loud Circle – my 4th Circle (September – November 2018)

I decided to do a 4th WOL circle to give me support while I worked through Liz Ryan’s book “Reinvention Roadmap” as my circle goal. A great set of ladies most of whom worked in HR-related roles.

Published an article on “Selecting your goal when you participate in a Working Out Loud circle”

Blog post

Read “Humble Consulting: How To Provide Real Help Faster”; Edgar Schein (April 2018)

This was not part of My book reading plan for 2018 but I was intrigued when I saw a photo of a set of books by Silke Westphal and decided to read it. As with the reading plan, I posted notes as I went along in Workplace by Facebook. I went on to do a WOL circle with Silke later in the year.

See my notes and practical application responses.

My relationship with books (April 2018)

In April, I started exploring doing book clubs on Workplace by Facebook. This blog post is a set of questions about our relationship with books that could be used by anyone to explore this subject and includes my own answers.

Reviewed and updated my online presences (February 2018

I did this as part of a WOL circle exercise. See blog post.

My year of reading in 2018 (January – December 2018)

At the end of 2017, I decided to plan out my reading in 2018 and try to stick to the “programme”. The following list includes my objective for reading the book and has links to my notes and application responses.

To fulfil my core desire of being simultaneously a generalist and a specialist, I will focus my learning in 2018 as follows:-

1. In January to further encourage my voracious appetite for learning, I will read and apply Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci
   My notes
   
   
2. in February to address my issue of being easily distracted and to start working and reading more deeply, I will read and apply Cal Newport's "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World"
   My notes
   
   
3. in March to understand Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and set my 1st set of personal OKRs, I will read and apply Christina R. Wodtke's "Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results"
   My notes
   
   April will be a rest/holiday month.
   
   
4. In May to understand and assess my level of professionalism in my service delivery across all areas of my life, I will read and apply David Maister's "True Professionalism: The Courage to Care About Your People, Your Clients, and Your Career"
   My notes
   
   
5. in June to improve my level of productivity, I will read and apply Charles Duhigg's "Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business"
   My notes
   
   
6. in July to read and learn from a discipline I am unfamiliar with, I will read and apply Atul Gawande's "Better: A Surgeon's Notes On Performance"
   August will be a rest/holiday month.
   My notes
   
   
7. In September to further craft my work style, I will read and apply "Manage Your Day to Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind" by various authors including Seth Godin, Scott Belsky, Dan Ariely et al and edited by Jocelyn K. Glei.
   
   
8. In October to explore the impact of technology on human relationships, I will read and apply Sherry Turkle's "Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other"
   
   
9. In November to explore what it means to belong and to be a member of a community, I will read and apply Brene Brown's "Braving the Wilderness: The quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone"
   
   December will be a rest/holiday month.

Focus: My One Word for 2018 (January to December 2018

In December 2017, I chose the word “Focus” as my second One Word for a year instead of a series of New Year’s Resolutions. I previously chose “Discipline” as my One Word for 2017. In 2018, I will be doing this in parallel with Fiona Michaux (Brussels, Belgium) after she invited me to do this in 2018. Her word was “Energy”.

This post explains the background.

Facilitator and a Member of a Working Out Loud Circle – my 3rd circle (November 2017 -  March 2018)

Via 2 senior Facebook execs seeing a public tweet of mine in #ESNchat, I was given “trial” access to an instance of Workplace by Facebook to facilitate my 3rd 12 week Working Out Loud circle from January 2018 to compare how it performs functionality-wise with Slack and Zoom which I have used for a number of other global/virtual groups. See the public invite.

This circle became a super-circle of 3 circles that I co-ordinated including configuring the Workplace platform (see a screenshot of one of the group pages below from a later circle). At its peak there were 25 people in the super-circle  active at some point during the 12 weeks of these circles. The user locations were from San Francisco in the west to New Zealand in the east.

I likened the experience of running these circles and being part of their running to being a Base Camp. This article – “The importance of base camp for career climbers” - was foundational in my thinking and practice during the circle and since.

This was a huge learning experience. I would love to do the same setup again of a circle of circles running on the back of some lessons learned from my experience which I was glad to be able to discuss with John (Stepper).

Compass-For-Life: Elite Leadership and Performance (December 2017)

Attended this one-day workshop delivered by Floyd Woodrow (22 years serving in the UK Special Forces) in Manchester, UK. This mainly concentrated on leading yourself but also how you lead teams. "Elite" meaning to push the boundaries of your potential. My course notes here.

Facilitator and a Member of a Working Out Loud Circle – my 2nd Circle (September – November 2017)

This Working Out Loud circle had 5 members in 3 countries/timezones (UK, Australia and Sri Lanka).

See blog post of my notes of this experience. This included publicly publishing one of the calls to mark International Working Out Loud week:

Published a blog post on “Considerations When Recruiting for a Working Out Loud Circle” (November 2017)

This was triggered by a question being asked in the WOL Facebook Group which I answered there and as I did so became my definitive take on the subject.

Interviewed Mathias Vermeulen (one of the 15 co-authors of the "Social Technologies in Business" book that was published earlier this year) (October 2017)

This was at the request of Isabel de Clercq (the lead author). Both are Belgians working out of Belgium. The interview was recorded in one-take in a Zoom video call with no editing. It was great spending time with him.

Facilitator and a Member of a 10-week virtual book club reading and applying Jane Bozarth’s book “Show Your Work: The Payoffs and How-To's of Working Out Loud” (September – November 2017)

This was  hosted purely in Slack. See the public invite that was issued to recruit members. This formed the major part of my WOL Circle personal goal. See my book notes and thoughts.

Studied the “Six Tools To Improve Your Tech Leadership & Communication” online course on Udemy (August 2017)

This course was designed by Sonsoles Alonso and Mark Farragher who are a husband and wife team based in Barcelona. This was a 7 hour online course covering topics of team working, power and communication. Although referencing technical systems development teams, this course is appropriate and practically helpful for all teams in all organisations. See my review. Sonsoles and I were in our first Working Out Loud Circle together.

Published a discussion/study guide for Isabel de Clercq et al’s “Social Technologies in Business” book (July 2017)

I had no plan to do this but as soon as I started reading the book a stream of questions came to mind on how to implement ESNs which I then collated. The guide consists exclusively of questions to help individuals and groups to apply the content of the book.

Pitched (unsuccessfully thus far) using Working Out Loud Circles to on-board a group of my employer’s recent new employees (June 2017)

Most of these colleagues are in their 20s and early in their careers. We are an IT services company. See blog post for the input notes I used.

Started regularly watching Gary Vaynerchuk's YouTube video channel (June 2017)

This was with specific reference to his content production content and his provocative take on how businesses need to operate in the digital world.

Started experimenting with Snapchat (June 2017)

This was inspired by Helen Blunden initially and then also by Michelle Ockers as they used that tool to work out loud. See these first attempts.

Organised a 24 hour global Twitter Chat on Working Out Loud Circles to mark International #WOLWeek (June 2017)

See the briefing notes and the tweets from the day.

Facilitated and participated in a 12-week virtual book club that read and applied “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life”, Bill Burnett, Dave Evans (May – July 2017)

See blog post containing my notes from reading the book and my responses to exercises set in the book and by me. See the public invitation to recruit members.

Member of a virtual book club reading and applying The War of Art (May 2017)

This was led by Tara Newman on Facebook.

Facilitator and a Member of a Working Out Loud Circle – my 1st Circle (January - March 2017

Facilitated and participated in my first 12 week Working Out Loud circle which had members in 5 countries/timezones. See blog post of my notes of this experience.

Wrote a personal reflection titled “Who is Simon? Why is Simon, Simon?” (March 2017)

See blog post of that reflection which summarises my education, learning and employment history to date as at March 2017. This was written as an output from my participation in a Working Out Loud circle for the first time.

Completed the first 6-week run of Julian Stodd’s Foundations of the Social Age MOOC (March to April 2017)

I was top of the final leader board for unit & exercise completion and engagement. See blog post of my notes and exercise responses.

Member of a virtual book club reading and applying Essentialism (February 2017)

This was led by Tara Newman on Facebook

Issued this call to action for all professionals to do a virtual Working Out Loud circle ASAP (February 2017)

I did this as a comment on Sukh Pabial's blog post about his experience of chairing 2 Learning Technologies 2017 Q1 London sessions delivered by Harold Jarche and John Stepper separately.

Produced “#ff - A Twitter "Follow Friday" how-to Guide” (January 2017)

This Wakelet is a good documented example of me being a black belt rabbit trail-er clicking links relentlessly to satisfy my curiosity and how I operate and the serendipity that often ensues.

I chose the word “Discipline” as my first One Word for a year (December 2016) …

… instead of a series of New Year’s Resolutions. See blog post for further info.

Did an analysis of my 2016 tweets (just over 10,100 of them!) (December 2016)

See link in title.

Doing MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses (2013 to 2016)

Completed 20 MOOCs on various platforms including  MIT, FutureLearn, HarvardX, EDX, Digital Business Academy and European Schools Network.

See blog post for a very high-level summary of my experience.

In 2014, I received FutureLearn’s “Inspiration on FutureLearn” award for my community building activities whilst doing their courses.