This post is part of the Guest Blog Grand Tour over at Life Without Pants – an epic journey of over 75 guest posts. Want to learn more about Matt Cheuvront & see how far the rabbit hole goes? Subscribe to the Life Without Pants RSS feed & follow him on Twitter to keep in touch!
One thing I love about Emily is that she doesn’t shy away from the “Gen Y” label. With a blog title like “From the Gen Y Perspective” it sort of engrained in her approach. In a community full of folks who are “afraid” of such a label, it’s refreshing to see someone who embraces it and runs with it.
Generation Y is an interesting species – some love us, some hate us, and a lot of us don’t want to be “us” – but if there’s one knock on us as a generation, it’s our “know it all” attitude. And what’s worse, when we learn something, we’re hesitant to “share the wealth” and help educate others.
This is where I strive to be different – with my work approach – with my career as a freelancer, and in my personal life – as Emily can attest to, my goal is to work WITH people – to train them and give people the tools to go and succeed on their own. It may not be free knowledge (a guy’s gotta pay the rent) but I am more than willing to educate anyone who’s interested in learning what I know.
The same can be said for my desire to learn. I live by the mantra that if you’re not learning, you’re not living. Life IS learning – when you settle in and become overly content with what you (already) know, you stifle your own personal growth and development.
Think about the places you’ve worked up until now. Did they encourage learning? Did they cross train you on what the rest of the team was doing? With me, that’s never been the case, and I’ve never understood. Not to mention it spelled disaster when someone was out of the office and the rest of the crew didn’t have a clue on what to do.
My current boss told me – from day one – “You’re not promotable unless you’re replaceable”. What it meant in my case was, I was starting in a new position for the company and needed to create processes for everything I was doing. Why? So, if need be or when the time comes, I (or anyone) could easily train and educate another person on everything I was doing.
It’s smart – in fact, I don’t understand why there isn’t more cross training. I get that everyone has their own role within a corporate structure, but I also believe that people work better when they understand the work that is being done around them.
What do you think? Should companies spend more time cross-training their staff? Is Generation Y less prone to share their wealth of knowledge with others?
“You’re not promotable unless you’re replaceable”
A simple yet memorable quote. I would have completely thought the opposite a few years ago. Not only does it ‘allow’ them to promote you, but it makes it that much easier for you to get work done.
Cross-training should be done. There is no reason why people in the same organization do not have a clue what is done on the other side of the floor they work on.
Well said Ryan – it doesn’t make any sense to me to have a team of people who are only capable of doing their “set” job. As soon as someone is out sick or on vacation, it’s all out anarchy. And, as you move forward in your own position, especially if you are in a new one, make sure you are developing processes for the work you are doing so someone else can easily pick up where you left off should you leave, get promoted, etc.
I can give a perfect example of this: A franchise was trying to finalize work for the end of the month numbers when the area manager went into the hospital with double-pneumonia. Work had to be stopped and nothing could be moved forward. The franchise was off about $300K for the month because there weren’t enough available resources cross-trained. In times like these, that $300K could have saved some jobs…
Great post, Matt! I completely agree!
What’s nice about my job at Pyxl is that we’re such a small company, so it’s really easy to watch everyone else in action and have a full understanding of what everyone else does. For the most part, we all essentially “run” our own departments, and while we couldn’t completely do each others jobs, we do understand each others work. We’re also working on doing a sort of “brown bag lunch” where we each have a day to show the rest of the team more about what we do…I think it’s an awesome way to cross-train each other. IMO, it’s really nice to understand the ENTIRE marketing process, not just the PR piece!
Exactly Nicole – you don’t have to be an expert in all areas – not even close, but you should at least understand the overall process and have a general idea for what everyone is contributing to the overall puzzle. It’s easier said than done, especially in larger companies – but cross-training should be an integral part of the orientation process in any organization. Thanks for the comment!
I’m a firm believer in being a well rounded individual – mostly because that’s just how I am. I have a wide variety of skills and interests – traditional trade school would probably have bored the hell out of me.
Cross training is definitely a good idea. I think where it isn’t implemented is in companies that are afraid of empowering their workers with knowledge/skills beyond their “job”. Which is ironic when you think about it. The more knowledge/skills an employee has, the more great they can do for the company (if they believe in the company).
The companies that are afraid of this are the companies that have created such a horrible environment for employees they’re afraid that (and probably right) the employees will take the new skills/knowledge and walk out the door.
That’s a good point about companies not wanting to give their staff TOO MUCH information to walk away with – but the best companies, and one’s I would consider working for, are interested in providing both personal and professional growth to their entire team, even if that means I “grow” to work for another company. As a manager, I want to leave a good impression on each person I work with – giving them skills to succeed and advance themselves. Thanks for the comment!
Matt, you figured it out man. All I ever try to do is help others realize what they might not have seen. It is not because I know more than anyone, I just may have read something, tried something, did something, that could help others who didn’t know about it. It’s really a simple game. Never stop learning, always answer people’s questions if you know the answer.
Work WITH not FOR – that’s what I believe and exactly what I carry out, especially in any freelance work I do. I give people the tools, like Emily here, to succeed moving forward. I may do the design for her and most of the grunt work, but when the dust settles my hope is that she knows how to take the tools I gave her and push forward.
Matt,
I love this blog post. For years, I’ve been letting the “next generation” pick my brain and I’m happy to do so. I’m a Gen Xer and I’ve had many influencers on my career help to “pay it forward.” Cross training breeds success and it’s amazing more companies do not do this.
During my time in higher ed, I experienced bosses who were very afraid to share knowledge. It baffled me that we weren’t a team, but five singular people trying to work for a goal. To answer Tim above, the work environment was horrendous.
I have had the chance to work with a few Gen. Yers and I haven’t seen any major adversity to working together.
I will say that hopefully down the road I get to work with people like yourself, Matt. It’s refreshing to see great ideas as yours.
Thanks so much for the comment Jason – it looks like we are in 100% agreement here. And who knows, maybe the opportunity will present itself for you and I to work together in the future!
Matt,
This is a GREAT, relevant post. Unfortunately, I can see how it would be easy for employees to become “knowledge snobs” in certain circumstances. For instance, if a company makes it clear that only one person will remain on staff, the environment becomes cut-throat and it is less likely the individuals will want to share what they learn. Some employers might think that creating a competitive atmosphere will raise work ethic, but in fact, it gives employees self-interested incentives. I completely agree that there needs to be cross training, so that everyone can be on the same page. Not only will this help the company be more effective and productive, but it will equip employees with more knowledge and skills that they can apply later on.
Lauren, to follow on your comment, leaders probably gain more respect by sharing their own skills from cross-training than by not. While they may not need to do certain tasks everyday, demonstrating understanding based on training or experience lets you know they may actually understand what it takes to get work done. I’ve seen a lot of times when a leader messed up because he never bothered to learn what operational tasks are needed for keeping things going. He figured that knowledge was beneath him, whereas it probably would have helped him.
Leaders not knowing what their team is doing is the absolute worst case scenario. As a manager – you don’t have to know HOW everything is done, but you need to have a very solid understanding of what is being done – which means you can’t always have your head in the clouds focusing on the big picture – from time to time, you need to get involved in the “worker-bees” tasks to develop an understanding – this is especially crucial in small-business environments. Thanks for the comment Lauren!
Hi Matt, this is a really interesting post. I certainly agree that companies should set aside to ensure that everybody knows what everybody else does. If not in detail, at least roughly. The company I work for had less than 50 employees when I started and so everybody knew the whole process more or less in detail. By now we are 200 people and you can clearly see the difference between those that learned the whole value chain, and those that only learned their own little thing.
As a result we do an open-door-day once in a while with my team. Everybody in the company is invited to drop by to chat a little about what we do and grab some chocolate, in exchange for telling us what they are up to at the moment. My team learns how everything goes together and whom to ask when something doesn’t work, and everybody else knows what we do, and what can be expected from us. Sadly this is our own initiative and not officially endorsed by the company (yet?). You don’t need to train everybody in everything, but at least people should have an idea.
And about Gen Y being less prone to share knowledge, I have mixed feelings there. I do have the impression that some people do not want to share knowledge because they are afraid to be replaceable in the sense of loosing their job (especially here in Spain, where the crisis has hit quite hard as well and the next person hired will always be cheaper than you). So for some being irreplaceable is a strategy to stay in place, even though this hurts the company in the long run. Perhaps sharing knowledge has something to do with how confident you are about yourself and your abilities.
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