The Age of Relationships: What Will You Have To Learn? What Will You Have To Unlearn?

Nobody reads my blog. Well, that is not entirely true, but most never leave a comment. On his great blog The Thinking Stick, Jeff Utecht posted about why people don’t leave comments on the blogs they read (Where are the comments?)

I of course, left a comment.

Jeff, your previous post about participating in Web 2.0 and the accompanying diagram provide some meaningful ideas.

As Gary Hayes said, “… that participation in society, politics, online social networks etc: is not either on or off it is a continuum of degrees of influence.”

Many more people fall on the continuum of consumer as opposed to commenter.

Having not have grown up with the ability to comment instantly on what we read, view, or hear, we are simply not used to doing it. In school, we never got to comment on or share what other student wrote or created. We simply created and that was it. Hand your work in, the teacher will make comments, not you.

Maybe we are just selfish. A comment signifies you have more insight than I. Your ideas are somehow more worthy than mine. Why should I help you?

Maybe we are just lazy!

But this got me thinking about something I read in Peter Sheahan’s book Flip. Peter believes that we are leaving the age of the knowledge worker and entering the age of relationships.

So just as we are coming to grips with the fact that we live in a flat world and knowledge workers is the area the education should be focused on developing, we come to find that even the knowledge itself is a commodity that can be outsourced overseas. In it’s place it the ability to create and trust and build relationships that will be the competitive advantage and need we should begin preparing our students for.

Peter says, “Being a knowledge worker is not going to offer competitive advantage in and of itself…In the years ahead, two things will count the most. The first is your ability to unlearn the things that are losing relevance, to flip yourself free of old scripts, and to learn the things that are gaining relevance. The second is whether people come to know and trust you as they struggle to bring their own learning forwards. That is do you really care about and respect them?”

So I ask what things are our students learning today that they will have to unlearn to be successful in the flat world of tomorrow?

Also, what sorts of skills and experiences must we provide for our students so that they are able to build relationships?

What are the tools of the relationship era? Blogs, wikis, podcasts, Twitter, Skype, YouTube, Wikipedia, Google Earth, Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and many other Web 2.0 technologies are certainly all examples of tools of the relationship age. How many teachers or principals are “literate” in these tools and technologies?  How many of our students are? 

Are we asking the right questions? What is literacy in the relationship era? What does educated look like in the relationship era? What will our students need to be able to do?

Peter says, “If you are betting instead on a lifetime of learning and unlearning, and of leveraging relationships with valued customers and clients, you should be confident of your ability to make your way.”

So, coming back to Jeff’s post. Wouldn’t posting comments on blogs we love or find interesting be a useful skill in the relationship era?

But then again I could be wrong. How else could we are still banning cell phones, blogs, and YouTube from our schools. So where is the real job preparation happening. In the school from 8 to 3, or in the Web 2.0 technology rich lives of our students outside of the classroom.

Speaking of Web 2.0, take a look at this YouTube video.

Comments

[Jeff Utecht]

I agree this is the ear of relationships. The web makes it easy...too easy sometimes. In my post I talk about how important linking is. Well, you linked to my blog, Google Blog search picked it up and brought it to my RSS reader and here I am. Relationships are built through links on the web. Linking whether it is through "friends" or through web links are what makes those relationships so easy.

Great post!