As is usually the case, I do some of my best thinking when I’m driving. Windshield time. Some jazz in the background. Getting lost in thoughts.
I had a couple of thoughts that intersected: Teaching and working with those who want to learn.
As many of you know, I’m an instructor with the Engineering Management Institute. EMI provides project manager training to engineering consultants and municipal agencies. I get to instruct on topics like scheduling, creating work breakdown structures, project plans and budgets, stakeholder management, and other PM-related topics. The sessions are all very well done. It’s a lot of fun.
As an instructor, teaching is pretty easy (for me anyway…) when the subject or topic are provided. If I’m teaching, let’s say, how to setup a total station, I can navigate the students through the process.
The challenge, as an instructor, is when you DON’T have a topic, when you don’t know what students know vs. don’t know? How do I get the wisdom & knowledge out of my brain when I don’t know the question is?
That’s the tough part in writing & recording: My subjects come from a vacuum. I talk about things that I like or am knowledgeable in, but I don’t get the sense of what those on the other side of the computer monitor, or those listening, when there is no feedback loop.
So that was Thought #1.
Thought #2 was this: I know that I’m putting out effort to help educate & assist others in our industry. It’s my passion project. It’s important. I feel it is a duty as a responsible professional to strive to Pay It Forward and pass along the wisdom and the knowledge that I have, in the same way that the senior members of teams I worked on in my younger years, showed & taught me.
Those are the people I want to work with – The Workers. You are here, reading the liner notes to a podcast. You get it. You are a worker. You are committed to your work and want to improve.
These resources are here for you. I’m fulfilling my responsibility of paying it forward. I hope that you are able to repurpose some of what I do. You’re here. You get it. You are a Worker.
My jump-off: How can I help? Do you have questions that you’d like to dialogue on? Is there something on-site or in the field office that is challenging you? And would a senior man’s voice who is not embedded into your team & work area be of help to you. I believe that if you have a question, somebody else does too, you were just the first to ask.
Hit me up.
Links from the episode:
Engineering Management Institute
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