Job Crisis? Keep Going!

Those of you who might think that life is better in other countries and that there is no struggle for living by the day, you should watch this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8015182.stm

After watching it, I have mixed feelings now. There is this pressure to do better in our careers, and to keep going (like the girl in the video). This pressure is different for everyone of us.

Career options are often not what we expect, and if we want to move we need qualifications. But more importantly we need stamina!

It is admirable from the girl in the video to still have stamina after weekly paying £46 out of £50 pounds in bills.

And yes, we have to keep going to pursue what we want to pursue in life. Even if this means giving up on jobs we could have. As long as we keep that in mind, there is always something to do, a job, including that of looking for a job.

Myself I am enjoying now working in academia and being in touch with people in industry. In this two worlds I can only say that what I see: Good people will eventually keep their jobs or get ones. These are people with stamina, desire, courage.

Often I wish I could have only half of the stamina that people like the girl in the video have...

Free riders and plants: The apprentice

I have not followed much the current series of "The apprentice" (from the BBC), but in the few things I have come across (of course "The apprentice" is everywhere these days even if you are watching the morning news), there is a striking situation.

There are free riders. Those who do not put themselves forward too much, and criticise those who do so. One of them has been already 'fired'. He said that he did not feel he needed to give much to his group in a task, as he was not asked or encouraged to do so. As if you do not swim when your ship is sinking because the captain of the ship did not tell you loud enough "swim!"

But there is another profile who is not getting the right recognition. It is the people with ideas. Those who venture to suggest things (and it is only a few of them). Project managers have to take whatever ideas are on offer from these people. And it could go either well or bad. Yesterday it went bad for one of the groups, but there was only one idea on the table. And the project manager was 'fired'.

I call these people the 'plants' (according to Belbin's classification of team profiles). They grow ideas, they provide 'oxygen' for other people to breathe, and they provide the life in the room. But they need to be cultivated, nurtured and looked after (by a group), and their ideas shaped so that they can be implemented. That does not happen in the 'apprentice'. Plants' ideas are taken almost literally, without discussion, without effort from the free riders. It is a 'everyman for himself' game.

The other sad thing is that free riders will be discovered and if they think they are doing well now by hiding, soon they will be found out.

Anyway, plants, these are brave characters which should be identified, nurtured. And project managers can learn their lesson of having free riders and plants. Good plans help, free riders will definitely not!!

The graduates in the city: How are they doing?

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet some of the graduates of my current university in the city of London. And it was in the heart of the 'city', which means the financial district. A nice bar close to the Lloyds Building which is close to the Gurkin Building in London. Very nice atmosphere and we built up a good environment for conversation. Some of them shared their views on how the job market is doing, and it was nice to see people that work in different parts of London as well as outside the city.

I was positively struck by knowing that the graduates to whom I talked seem to be very flexible. Their degrees gives them possibilities to work in different areas. It could be that they do geography, biology, European studies or languages, physics or mathematics, but that does not stop them from working in areas like television, information technology management, financial analysis, business process improvement and even research funding.

What is also striking is to know that even despite what we see as a job crisis, some of them are thinking of changing careers. Either they want to travel, or they want to go back to university to enhance their qualifications. This is not the case of everyone, as some graduates are also cautious and would like to keep the job. But the motivation to change is there. Either because there is a perceived imminent 'redundancy' to be made soon (and we also met graduates who are actively looking for jobs, so the event was a good opportunity), or because they see themselves having a break to think and go to where they want to go. Two graduates I met want to work in areas in which they can pursue their interests in development, social responsibility and environmental management. One of the other graduates I met already moved from working in the financial sector to become a civil servant working with children and schools.

Our graduates remember a friendly university environment, a good place to study, meet people, party (of course!), fall in love maybe for the first time and then try to get the job they wanted to do in the first place. These things to me are still there. I feel we are a friendly place, we give our students options, and we also allow them to think about their interests. What I also learn is that our graduates still keep alive their passions, even if this means changing careers.

Maybe there is a lot that we can still do to help them to make sure they pursue their passions.

Green IT or Green Behaviour?

I attended recently a conference of the Environmental Association of Universities and Colleges (EAUC), it was very interesting and eye-opening experience. Interesting because I could see how sustainability is being practised in campuses, and how also systems thinking is making a contribution in education and in the design of sustainability assessment tools. An example is the project on sustainable IT in tertiary education (http://www.susteit.org.uk/). Its outputs suggest that sustainable forms of IT (thin clients, virtualisation of data, adequate and consciencious storage and energy management) could help in reducing the carbon footprint of institutions.

The experience was also eye-opening for me as an academic, because although action is being taken and action is suggested in the management of universities and colleges as institutions, there are two missing elements that could also contribute. I am referring to students and academics, and our behaviour towards sustainability.

Students are for the most part the inhabitants of campuses. We (I am also a student of French courses) come and go, we live in campus, we prepare consume campus products (not only lectures, parties, or meetings). We think our life in campus is temporary but we spend on average a good number of hours. We should do something about sustainability. Unfortunately this issue seems to be out of our life in campus. There are very interesting projects and ideas already happening in relation to recycling and cycling. Still there is a long way to go if we talk about shaping our behaviour in daily life. And there is a longer way if we talk about IT. So far campuses aim to provide many facilities and action is focused on energy. Behaviour is, as Andy Hix (our sustainability officer) and other colleague point out, the difficult bit to change.

A similar concern with sustainability surrounds academics. Some of us research in sustainability, but it can also be directed to what happens in campus. There is a growing area in relation to students behavior to sustainability. If we can link this up with how students use IT in relation to sustainability, I would have made my wish possible: To do research on IT and sustainability in an area which I have close to my interests. How about 'green' behaviour being shaped by IT and also in relation to IT?

Green behaviour is an area that we can research to see if those goals of sustainability can be better met. IT is now on the way, not only because IT consumes energy (and therefore becomes an area in which our carbon footprint needs to be managed), but also because it is something we all use in university campuses. Greener interfaces (friendlier, holistic, simpler), with greener hardware, and with tools that allow us to reflect on our greener behavior in a greener way...my God I need another coffee to keep dreaming.

Hopefully a good project will come out of this.