Losing one's place - and allowing grief
The rapidly escalating speed with which change is happening in the world affects everyone whether acknowledged or not. Some of the swift changes are occurring in people's employment. In this past year, over a weekend, virtually all the toll booths were discontinued on the Massachusetts State Turnpike. Along with the toll booths went the toll booth operators, a job, while not the most intellectually challenging, paid well and employed many hundreds of people. This is a loss.
At the same time there is the phenomenon called "makerspace" that has been developing and is now appearing both in job postings and as an element of other job descriptions. It is at that beginning stage that has yet to be truly regulated and by it's very nature is definable only on a case by case basis. It all depends on what form the defining organization takes. Based on developing creativity, courage and problem-solving it defies the characteristic hard definition of when it is successful. Having failure considered a positive couple with iteration it calls for a different way of regarding success. This is positive but can be frightening to someone who has not been in a position to feel comfortable or have had the opportunity to embrace the requisite skills that go with the job.
These are examples of "job space" that is changing. A similar type of change process has been occurring in the library profession as digital has replaced physical and outside services have replaced some traditional skills like cataloging. For a field to stay nimble the ability to embrace uncertainty has to be cultivated. At the same time it is human to experience change as loss even if the net result is a gain. You have to allow room in the process to grieve the change and enough time to reincorporate it into your schema and your employees schema. One of the frequent reasons of lack of success when proposing a change in practice, culture or job task is that the grief of loss of the old is not taken into account and the new given enough time to be explored in a safe way.
At the same time there is the phenomenon called "makerspace" that has been developing and is now appearing both in job postings and as an element of other job descriptions. It is at that beginning stage that has yet to be truly regulated and by it's very nature is definable only on a case by case basis. It all depends on what form the defining organization takes. Based on developing creativity, courage and problem-solving it defies the characteristic hard definition of when it is successful. Having failure considered a positive couple with iteration it calls for a different way of regarding success. This is positive but can be frightening to someone who has not been in a position to feel comfortable or have had the opportunity to embrace the requisite skills that go with the job.
These are examples of "job space" that is changing. A similar type of change process has been occurring in the library profession as digital has replaced physical and outside services have replaced some traditional skills like cataloging. For a field to stay nimble the ability to embrace uncertainty has to be cultivated. At the same time it is human to experience change as loss even if the net result is a gain. You have to allow room in the process to grieve the change and enough time to reincorporate it into your schema and your employees schema. One of the frequent reasons of lack of success when proposing a change in practice, culture or job task is that the grief of loss of the old is not taken into account and the new given enough time to be explored in a safe way.