Mindsets Lead to Tech Skills
TL/DR: Here is the sign-up link to this and other (fun) webinars.
My first few weeks and months in my brand new data & operations job at a big, national non-profit (Teach For America) were a trial-by-fire experience. I was extremely lucky/privileged to have been hired into a role that I was in no way qualified for. Side-note: If you want the job, just apply. I was a literature major in college and a music theater nerd. I had actively avoided using data and technology of all kinds in the 5 years I was working in my book publishing job (my first out of college). The only thing I had was a small amount of exposure to Social Entrepreneurship in my part-time graduate program that I was only half-way through at the time. But I convinced the hiring manager that I would put my heart and soul into my work and would learn anything I needed to learn to succeed.
What that looked like in reality was going to meetings where I tried to follow along but only understood half of what anyone was talking about, tapping people on the shoulder and constantly interrupting their work to ask questions and have them explain pretty basic concepts to me, Googling for hours and hours to find solutions to my tech questions and issues (now I use Ecosia for those searches, and yes I still do them, though I do them better), and also so so so so so so so many mistakes that led to me re-doing my work so so so so so so so so many times.
Looking back on it, I know that my problem was in trying to learn technical skills through (misnamed) “simple” step-by-steps and training materials that were out of context - meaning out of the context of my work. If you have ever had the experience of “trying to learn how to do a vlookup” then you know what I’m talking about. It is very hard for me to learn tech skills out of the context of the work that I am doing. I was trying to learn how to “push the buttons in the right way at the right time” but that was just not working for me. And I could see that it wasn’t working for the passionate, dedicated, amazingly intelligent people with whom I was working.
What DID start to work for me was applying the core values and competencies (I hate that word) that TFA was asking all of its employees to apply to their jobs. Things like critical thinking, grit, resilience, innovation, equity, relationship building, collaboration, experimentation, continuous learning, and more. The things that made a person successful in their marketing role, their recruitment role, their teacher role, their leader role, their fundraising role - applying these MINDSETS and approaches to data & tech work is what propelled my technical learning. I started to actually understand the basic foundations of how our technology was working, why it was working, what I wanted it to do for me, and finally how to make it work for me.
Once this new pathway to learning was unlocked, I started to share it with my colleagues at TFA. It was clear early on that because they were already applying these same mindsets and approaches to their work in areas like fundraising and community building and teaching and leading that they were 1,000% capable of turning these skills towards data & tech learning and of doing it successfully. Once I saw mindsets applied to tech learning be successful at TFA, I was hooked.
Years later I was again extremely fortunate when I met my data & tech bestie and business partner Samantha Shain, who runs The Data Are Alright. Together we worked on our own set of mindsets to help propel our tech learning and work forward and we have shared them with others through our presentation Change-Making Mindsets for Mission-Driven Data & Tech Work.
I am thrilled to be presenting these mindsets again on February 22nd, 2023 at 1pm EST. You can find the sign-up link to this and other (fun) webinars on my website.
