אורן גרצמן - אתר יצירות - חושב-כותב

11.09.2017

  We all know the term on-the-job training, but what happens when the training ends? My employer had a training program all laid out and ready for me and now it's finished… I'm ready to performs my duties and do my job in a very calculated and efficient way.

  Since in my case, I'm a Mechanical Engineer, it all has to be very calculated in order to achieve the best design possible, it's easy to see how a good training program might be very helpful in my case.

  Now the program has ended, I'm really doing my job very well, so how come I feel like I've been left behind? Each time I get that feeling I check whether there are some upcoming conventions or trade fairs so I can see what's new around me, get to know new stuff, new people – wouldn't that be great?

  Well… up to a point I think that is what most of us are doing most of the time. We don't have the time to think outside our work frame because we're busy all the time with… right! With doing our job – nothing wrong with that.

  Since we're a curious lot we seek to design better machines (us the mechanical engineers… don't know about the rest of you 😊). If we want to design better machines we need to have more knowledge about more interesting stuff. So what do I do about all that stuff that I'm so interested about? I read about it, but not in my private time – I do that while working on one of my projects.

  Sometimes I just need a simple bolt to fit a hole in my design. I found that bolt but I see there is something new on the bolts catalog. I read a bit about it, why not? It won't change the bolt chosen for my design, but I did a small research on my own about a new type available for use.

  I do that kind of stuff all the time. I don't sit down working and waiting for the next opportunity to learn something new – I do that proactively all the time. In a world where knowledge and data are at our fingertips, more and more of it every passing day, it would be a like committing a career suicide not absorbing that knowledge on a daily basis.

  There are no on-the-job training anymore… it's continuous learning and research that must be done in order to preserve and advance our professional knowledge.

  Don't feel guilty about wasting your employer's time by doing "irrelevant" research. You're doing both you and him a great service. It doesn't mean you can stay at your desk all year long and not travel to seminars and fairs, but when you meet your peers at these events you'll discover that you're not the only one doing on-the-job research and that your exchange of knowledge during these events will be much more fruitful than before.

  If you're reading this all the way through you're on the right track.

  Now get back to your job, enough time wasted 😊 that is, until your next retreat for your continuous on-the-job research.

Good Luck for all the professionals out there…