Remaining Employable

Going back to Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat, the future will offer continued employment to people who hold critical skills or talents. For example, people who can collaborate with others will make dissimilar concepts work together and create whole new concepts including new products and services. Another example, people who can orchestrate broad and dissimilar functions, skill sets and resources into a well-functioning whole. Yet another example: great explainers.

Let’s get a better look at the last item.  Great Explainer. What’s that?

Well, it could be many things, but mostly it is a person who grasps the essence of complicated material and can explain it well to others, make it come alive. An explainer helps others understand concepts and complex functioning in a manner that enables them to perform or adapt well to the circumstances that can use the concept successfully. This is especially valuable in manufacturing processes, product assembly and interfacing duties among several people or teams. It is also useful in analytic tasks where divergent fields come together and morph into something unintended. How does a firm deal with these oddities? Someone has to determine how to work with these opportunities. Explainers find out how the concepts work and how to better use them.

Great explainers help other people see the usefulness of an idea or product or service in their lives. Great explainers are often very effective teachers. Or advertising concept people. Or marketers.

Explainers make sense of our complex lives in highly useful, day to day contexts.

Are you the sort of person whose eyes glaze over when confronted with pages and pages of financial data? Or process manuals that tell you exactly how to use your computer more effectively? Or a repair manual that tells you how to disassemble a piece of equipment, replace a part, and reassemble the item for continued use? Do these situations put you to sleep or excite you to action? If the latter, you are probably a great explainer.

I once had a reader of our local paper remark on my broad background of understanding civic issues in our town. I told her the material didn’t make sense to me until I researched it and accumulated a working knowledge of the material. Over time many issues converge with others and the complexity may increase, but so does the understanding of how they fit together. Explaining that becomes a simple matter of logical reporting of connections. Guess I am an explainer.

When my kids were younger they constantly asked “Why?” And I simply told them: “it’s basic physics, kids.” Today we laugh about that. But seriously; it is basic physics.

The properties which surround us, the context of our lives, usually work quite logically. Gravity has universal effects on us. So does electricity. Barometric pressure. Vectors of wind or motion of physical bodies. These elements interact with one another. They have an effect on each other, and cause other motions or actions to take place. That’s the why and the how all wrapped up in one unified happening! It is basic logic. And although the sciences involved may be biology, chemistry, mathematics, hydrology or something else, physics helps us understand how the physical world works. Some of it is quite basic. Some is esoteric. But physics none the same.

We can laugh at complexity. Or glaze over. Or ignore it. Or we can rise to the challenge and understand it so it works for us, not against us. Explainers can help with that task. And they usually have jobs readily available.

Walk into any store selling technology equipment. You go where the staff can help you determine which hardware or software will work in your circumstances best. Often that is an actual store you can walk into, like Best Buy. Amazon.com works well for those who already know their stuff about a product and can make an informed decision over the Internet. But for the vast majority of us, we need to walk into a store and talk to someone who can help us understand their product line in relation to our contextual needs.  That’s a good role for an explainer.

Teacher, counselor, sales associate, analyst…whatever; an explainer is needed. A great explainer is in demand and highly employable.

Might you be one?

April 6, 2012