What are you going to do with all that knowledge?

I turned 50 a few months ago (no sympathy, please!)  I guess I’m not the first person to get all reflective around this time and I’m sure I won’t be the last so bear with me.

I started my first blog in 2004 but that quickly sputtered to a halt due, I think, to the total lack of response.  I started this current blog in April 2011 so you can see I’m not exactly bursting with ideas on this one either.  However, I do want to stick with it because (he said modestly) I do think I have a world view that is worth something to somebody, somewhere.  (Hello, wherever and whoever you are.)

Testing that hypothesis is what got me started on LinkedIn.  I wanted to test the waters with my thoughts and ideas and see what happened – did they have value or was I just another arrogant so-and-so kidding himself?

I was fortunate to jump into a couple of discussion groups that live up to their name so, after sitting on the side of the pool for a while, I dipped in a toe or two.  To my delight, they weren’t bitten off so the toes were very rapidly followed by feet, knees, arms and the whole lot – I plunged into LI on-line discussion groups full tilt and loved every second of it.

You may have come to this post via Twitter, so you know I’m active there as well.  It’s a great learning resource.  I pass on (retweet) stuff all of the time but I’m not great at creating original tweets yet.

So why do I enjoy LI and Twitter so much and why am I continuing to biff away at blogging?

The answer came as a Damascene moment when I was reading an article about succession planning.  It talked about employees passing knowledge down to their juniors in order to retain the information within the organisation.

That’s exactly what I’m doing!  Except, I work in a department of middle-aged men within a company of, mostly, middle-aged, mostly, men.  The age spread is Sales is roughly 45-55 years old in a department of 7.  There is no-one to whom any of us can pass our expertise!

It seems this desire to pass ideas from generation to generation is hard-wired into us so my outlet has to be external – on the blog, in Twitter and in LI discussion groups.  There is nowhere else for it to go.

So what happens next?  Do I continue on this merry course or do I take a more pragmatic approach and make it work for me – do I become a consultant and sell my knowledge?

I guess that’s the next test – do I have it in me to take the leap?  Time for more reflection.