Who am I today?
How we describe ourselves has consequences…
Recently a number of people have shared that ‘creativity’ was listed by LinkedIn as one of the most desired skills by employers for 2019. This got me thinking that how we describe ourselves has consequences, and led me to reflect on a job that intrigued me recently on LinkedIn. It said I wasn’t a good match for the job because I didn’t have entrepreneurial or creativity skills. Given that I have not only founded and run my own company but that it also happens to be a highly creative one, making a range of natural soap and clean beauty products with a focus on design and artisan crafting, this profile match felt a little inaccurate!
The reason the profile match didn’t pick up on some of my skills? I hadn’t listed my natural lifestyle company on LinkedIn because I felt it had nothing to do with ‘my career’, which I had always described as being in education technology. EdTech / environmentally-friendly cosmetics… not exactly in the same sphere of work, right?
I mentioned this dilemma at the recent meetup I had with the bunch of highly creative ‘EdTech’ people I work with, at We Are Open. I also raised that I was finding it a bit of a mental juggling act running enterprises in different sectors — being in one headspace then jumping into my ‘other’ job’s headspace. Am I a Soaper, a Techie or an Educationalist today? Am I trying to be part of the solution to plastic pollution with my designs for biodegradable packaging, or am I helping a city to enable lifelong learning?
We Are Open formed around our work in EdTech but we probably all migrated towards each other because we share a very developed sense of creativity, some of which is explicit in our own enterprises, and some perhaps less so but which reveals itself through how we approach our work. We like to do things differently, think about how things could be done differently, and help others to see and do things differently (and of course better!). This is a highly creative process but somehow the creative element of our work felt a little quashed under the title of EdTech that we are all known for.
So if we’re not just about EdTech, how could we describe ourselves?
Enter the Creative Collective! During our catch up, we realised there might be a better way of defining ourselves that would let us integrate, or at least not keep artificially separate, the creative pursuits we all do, that inspire us and form a significant part of our working lives. Whether it’s helping companies to do things better, building a re-mixer platform that allows others to create and hack projects, or creating a new soap, they all have creativity in common.
Deciding what headspace I’m in today or for the next half hour now feels a little easier. I’m all of my jobs (and much more) and with We Are Open having given ourselves permission to connect the different realisations of what motivates us, it feels like we have opened our horizons. We’ve not quite worked out what we’re going to do with a greater connection between all our areas of work but we have a clearer sense of how we want to work, and to (ironically) be more open about all the things that inspire us.
One of the first things we have agreed, is to re-focus Badge News and give it a new name: The Learning Fractal. This will enable us to widen the subject matter to include articles about creativity in learning, learning pathways and new frontiers in educational technology. If any of those are of interest to you, you can sign up here.
Laura Hilliger has written a great post about our meetup, in between writing her book that may or may not be about zombies. We know our new plan might feel a little crazy but Laura quotes something that has given me a lift at times when I’m wondering if it’s worth continuing to pursue the rather ambitious challenges I’ve set for my company:
“Here’s to the crazy ones… Because people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” Johnny Appleseed
If you want to see some of the tools and processes we use to help others to re-imagine their businesses, and create solutions to complex challenges, take a look at our Tools page. If you want to check out the other creative headspace I occupy for some of my days, you can find my natural lifestyle company at Grá Lifestyle.
We Are Open Co-op works to spread the culture, processes, and benefits of openness wherever we can. Get in touch and see how we can help you!
