I’ve often thought about what makes a professional successful, what makes one good at one’s job. Starting out as a technical writer with a degree in English Literature and “literary” writing, I had absolutely no training in my profession. I looked with envy at the schooling of some of my colleagues, wishing I understood professional writing as well as they did.
I just read the article The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart (subscription required) from this month’s The Atlantic. The gist of the article is that business schools primarily churn out MBAs who know the heuristics and tools of business management, but few of whom have been taught to actually think rationally about business. They learn formulas and systems, but none of this prepares them for the reality of business, that the formulas cannot be merely applied to a business problem like a template solution. So MBAs (good ones, anyway), end up learning 90% of what they need to know on the job. This passage goes to the core:
Of course, management education does involve the transfer of weighty bodies of technical knowledge that have accumulated since Taylor first put the management-industrial complex in motion—accounting, statistical analysis, decision modeling, and so forth—and these can prove quite useful to students, depending on their career trajectories. But the “value-add†here is far more limited than Mom or Dad tend to think. In most managerial jobs, almost everything you need to know to succeed must be learned on the job; for the rest, you should consider whether it might have been acquired with less time and at less expense. (Stewart 5)
When I started work after graduation, I had to learn every aspect of technical writing except for the grammar and syntax (and even some of that) on the job. To my amazement, within a few months I had got the hang of it, and within a half year I’d earned the respect of my peers as a professional. Yes, I was still very inexperienced, but I did the job well.
After a couple of years, the job stopped growing, and so did I. It made me miserable, and I didn’t realize why. I dreaded coming into work every day to drudge through the same thing over and over, without feeling as if I was getting any better, without evolving. One day, sitting at my desk, one of my father’s axioms filtered into my mind. He would say to me “Never be impressed by length of experience. Thirty years’ experience isn’t worth much if it’s the same year thirty times.” He always said it with a mischievous wink. In that moment, I grasped exactly what he meant, and from the very wrong side of that perspective: I had five years of experience, at least two of which were repeated years.
An inexorable impulse drove me to enroll in graduate school as soon as I could dance my fingers through typing the application. I figured that I would learn so many new techniques and skills that I could finally feel like a real writer. What I found was quite different.
Most of the core principles of writing were ones I already knew, even if unconsciously. For example, rule one is to always write for your users, focusing on their needs above all else. I had been applying them without realizing it for years. Why? Because my previous education in English literary analysis taught me how to think. How to reason and solve problems.
What graduate school has done more than anything else is twofold:
- It provided me with a language with which I can think about and communicate issues of professional writing.
- By bringing my internal understanding of technical communication to the level of conscious thought, it enabled me to begin growing on my own. In short, enabling me to think rationally about my profession.
Matthew Stewart’s point is that people should forego management training in favor of something that has values like clear communication and clear, accountable thinking, and learn what they need to know about management on the job.
I would agree with that as far as it goes; however, I would add one point: going back to school for professional training after gaining experience in a field makes the schooling far, far more meaningful. You have an internal framework of experience upon which you can build out an increased awareness and understanding of your profession.
When I look around at my fellow graduate students, many of them have come into the program directly from their undergraduate degrees. There are times that I can see in their eyes, and in their comments, that they don’t really understand the value of what we are learning, that to them the knowledge is caught in puffs of entangling, fuzzy cotton instead of connecting to a framework of experience. This is not to disparage my classmates; they are extremely intelligent and motivated people. But I get the sense that the learning they are doing hasn’t found a place to call home yet…they don’t really “get” how it will apply in a professional situation. In other words, when they get to their first job, they will still be learning most of the job on the job.
So what is my point? I am suggesting that those interested in a professional career of some kind should worry less about direct professional training during school, and worry more about a solid foundation of rational thought and communication. Then, after garnering some experience, return to the classroom (or otherwise advance their learning) to construct a practical set of professional principles that will engage them with the rest of their developing career.