Reflections on professional experience

I have been off-line for a little while simply because I have been thinking! Part of those thoughts relate to my own directions, part relate to the core focus of this blog.

Over the last few years, I have changed my mind on some issues. For example, I am a stronger supporter of partnership models than I was so long as the partners accept the limitations involved.

On some other issues such as the the profit per equity partnership concept, I think that they are just as dangerous as before unless very carefully defined.

Then, on some issues such as time based charging, I have formed the view that a lot of the discussion simply misses the point. Time based charging has its problems, but it still is the best approach in some circumstances.

I have also become frustrated about my inability to get advice across about the need for change.

Part of this relates to a purely professional question that I have discussed before. What do you do when your client wants advice that you know won't work or must be just plain wrong? Part of this relates to my own professional skills, my inability to get a story across. However, part also relates to current management structures and attitudes within professional services. Some of this is just plain wrong.

Over the next week or so I thought that I might record my conclusions from all my thought. It's hard for a professional to accept his/her failures. Yet if we don't, how can we improve?        

Overcoming chaos in the home office

For much of the last few years, I have largely worked from a home office. Then I moved to on-site work.

My home office was always a bit chaotic. Things deteriorated rapidly after I moved to on-site work, not helped by the habit of my family of dumping things in my space for me to get rid of!

For reasons I won't bore you with, the need to find past papers has suddenly made tidying up a matter of urgency. So I have been going through the piles. In doing so, I suddenly realised that my presence in the on-line world has actually changed the way I work. More precisely, the way I should work.

I have my computer with its electronic files. Then there are my various blogs, web sites and social networking sites.

I tend to keep paper records because they are easier to read, while I have also been worried by things such as computer collapses as well as software changes. The quantity of electronic material that I can no longer access is quite astonishing! So paper records have been of great value.

No more. There are still some things that need to be kept in paper form, but now I have a wide range of storage options, as well as a content creation and modification process. Let me illustrate what I mean.

In my personal as opposed to professional space, I am an historian and economist. I write a fair bit of historical stuff that I would like other people to read. However, I struggle to find the time to write proper journal articles.

I know from experience just how ephemeral records can be. There is no certain way of ensuring that material is preserved. However, with an effective content creation process, you can improve both access (this is important in a professional sense) and the chances of your writing surviving.

The starting point is my blogs. I use these to explore and record ideas. In survival terms, I am dependent here on Google. If Google were to go down, this material would be lost. But in the meantime, blogging is a good way to develop ideas for later access and re-use.

Some of this material I transfer to my existing web sites. Here I can make longer material available in differing forms. As part of this, I have access to a password protected intranet that I can access from anywhere in the world. So I can post work in progress in various forms for later use.

This the most vulnerable point in the whole process in that survival depends upon the survival of the site provider on one side, my ability to keep payments up on the other.

To overcome this, I have begun to use Wikipedia to put up historical material, thus ensuring broader access. I have also just started to turn some of my material into forms suitable for book publication.

Linking all this back to my home office point. I simply don't need to keep a lot of the stuff I used too because my whole process has changed.

Looking Up - regaining a sense of perspective

Photo: Gordon Smith, Looking Up

It has been a little while since I carried a photo on this blog.

This photo from my favourite photo blog reminds me that sometimes we need to take our eyes and focus from our immediate concerns and look up at the world around us.

As a child, I used to lie on the ground to look up at the sky through the trees. It's the same world, but from a very different perspective.

Personal musings - cross-fertilisation within the professions

We all write through a prism set by our experience. I certainly do.

I was reflecting on this recently, reflections triggered by the need to update my CV. Looking back, I can see how my writing has changed over time as my work focus has changed.

This blog has quite a strong focus on the legal profession. Yet I did not complete my first assignment in the legal sector until 2001.

I began my professional career as an Australian Government public servant, working as a professional economist and policy adviser. That was one perspective.

Then I moved to the private sector to develop a practice providing consulting, training and information services with a special focus on the electronics, aerospace and information industries. A second perspective.

After a period as an independent consultant, I spent two years as CEO of a specialist medical college responsible, among other things, for the training of eye care specialists in Australia and New Zealand. A third perspective.

Then I ran a network of independent professional services firms. As part of this, I resumed my role as a strategic consultant with a special focus on the professional services arena. A fourth perspective.

Each area that I have worked in has had its own unique focus. This has affected my own writing and thinking in terms of topic and approach. Yet, looking back, the thing that stands out is the commonalities between areas.

Yes, there are often profound differences. The team and project based focus that you find in some areas is very different from, say, the individuality of practice in law or medicine. Despite this, there are still enormous commonalities.

In theory, this combination of common and different should provide a powerful base for cross-fertilisation. In practice, this is rarely achieved because of the powerful silo effects created by professional divides.

I am still struggling at a professional level to find the best way to overcome this. Sometimes I think that I am making progress, at other times I think that I am as far away from success as ever.

Despite these problems, I still think that the effort is worthwhile.