– Melanie Doulton
“In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.” –Charles Darwin.
This Darwinian tenet might be clichéd, but it is undoubtedly relevant. Nature gives us scores of examples of how adapting to changing environments marks the path of survival and its corollary, evolution.
Consider crows – birds that especially thrive and adapt around humans1. For example, crows have been known to drop nuts from a height onto hard surfaces in order to crack them. Since this was not always effective with nuts with harder shells, such as walnuts, crows in Tokyo have been filmed2 cracking nuts by using vehicle traffic! Even more mindboggling, these birds were then observed using pedestrian stop lights to retrieve the aforesaid cracked nuts from the road. There are several other stories of the ingenious nature of crows3 that demonstrate their ability to adapt and find ingenious solutions by breaking all conventions and coming out on top.
Given the fate of our ‘top dogs’ in the aftermath of the recent economic crises, might we benefit far more from becoming ‘top crows’ instead? I like to think that Darwin’s fittest are not the strongest, cleverest, or even the most skilled, necessarily, but are those withadaptive smarts, something crows seem to have in spades. Adaptive smarts are about finding innovative applications using existing means for outcomes that change the game. With reference to our hyperadaptive co-habitants, the crows, adaptive smarts meant no longer being content with just dropping nuts from a height to crack them, but discovering that unusual but easily available ‘tools’, that is, vehicles, can be used to crack them, therefore dramatically changing how they survive and, more importantly, thrive. Using adaptive smarts to alter your frame of reference and cross boundaries can enable you to discover variegated opportunities that are, moreover, less competitive. More options and less competition is the best kind of win-win situation.
So how is all this relevant to your technical writing career in these tough economic times? The rest of this discussion concentrates on strategies to help you strengthen your adaptive smarts. How you choose to implement these strategies is a highly personal process, given your own unique circumstance. The idea here is to provide some food for thought to help you develop your own particular brand of adaptive smarts.
Change your perspective
One strategy could be to expand your thinking4 to find new ways to adapt to dynamic, ever-changing environments.
For example, in the context of the current economic scene, jobs might be much scarcer now than they were a few years ago. But, looking at the problem from a different angle, the economic downturn has not affected all job markets equally. You could explore markets that might not be on your radar. Government agencies and non-government organizations such as the United Nations and Amnesty International are still hiring.
Another example might be teaching jobs. Teaching technical communication part time locally can be a great way to network and also provides a valuable resume addition. Or you might want to think about reporting for online technical magazines. Reporting on technological advances provides a different kind of writing experience and develops your skills in a new area.
Going solo by starting your own company might be another option especially if you have already considered it in the past. While it can be a higher risk option, it is also usually a more rewarding and exciting option.
Step out of your comfort zone
In addition to changing your perspective, another strategy is to go outside your comfort zone. Explore seemingly disparate opportunities that challenge you even when you have no experience or guarantee of achieving reasonable proficiency or success. Discomfort that comes from being out of your element is a great catalyst for change so find out what makes you uncomfortable and try it.
In the mid-nineties, when technical communication first became a viable professional option in India, the job market was highly competitive in the then exploding IT industry and career growth options were relatively limited. But, if you stepped out of the comfort zone and changed the frame of reference, an altogether interesting solution was apparent: During that time before the dot com bust, there was also a great demand for English-speaking technical writers in non-Anglophone countries. There was a camouflaged, but viable, job market in Western Europe and South East Asia, where qualified, English-speaking technical writers were in high demand. These overseas opportunities, while posing incredible challenges, also provided the added bonus of valuable international experience. If you’re willing to jump into unchartered territories, you might find a host of under-tapped opportunities and benefits.
Another really uncomfortable but valuable option: working for free. Doing volunteer work by offering free or heavily discounted technical writing services to schools, universities, religious organizations, libraries, etc., can expand your portfolio, keep your skills sharp, and build your network. Accepting that the market has shifted might mean turning the change into an opportunity for retooling and working at a discount or for free. One of the big advantages of this option is that it avoids serious gaps in your resume while also providing an opportunity to learn new skills and practice them.
Be open to inspiration
Sometimes cultural forces and conventional thinking can deter your natural creativity and tend to have the so called crab bucket syndrome5. It becomes nearly impossible to change your perspective or to step out of your comfort zone. To combat such potential-limiting obstacles, find ways to be open to inspiration. Try a new experience. Go on an adventure. It doesn’t even have to be related to work. Sometimes, it’s enough to sign up for a tap dancing class to jumpstart brainwaves. Delving into new adventures takes you out of yourself, changes your perspective and, most importantly, inspires ideas for change. And if you find you’re a tap dancing prodigy in the bargain, all the better! Or, for more focused inspiration, get involved with other professional communication groups. Such groups offer you networking opportunities that provide fodder for breakthrough ideas, at the very least. You can find inspiration anywhere; you just have to look for it.
All these strategies have worked either for me directly or for people I know. Developing your adaptive smarts by changing your perspective, stepping out of your comfort zone and being open to inspiration will aid you in navigating a rapidly changing world. With change being the only constant that you can count on, let’s learn from the crows how to crack a few nuts!
- Known as synanthropic species.
- Video clip from David Attenborough’s BBC documentary, The Life of Birds: http://www.babelgum.com/131346/attenboroughs-life-birds-crows-the-city.html
- TED Talks Video: The Intelligence of Crows by Joshua Klein: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows.html
- Breaking Out of the Box: Meaning and Means by Gerald Zaltman: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/display.asp?id=7995
- ‘It is said that if you want to keep a live crab in a bucket, put more than one crab in it. As one crab tries to climb out of the bucket, the other crab tries to pull it down.’ –The Happiness Factor: How to be Happy No Matter What by Kirk Wilkinson
About the Author
Melanie Doulton has been working as a technical writer in various capacities for over 14 years. A fledgling tap dancer, an ardent Impressionist art lover, she is currently a communications analyst for the Information and Communication Technology Division of the United Nations Department of Field Support in New York City. You can email Melanie at melanie.doulton@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared in the October 2009 issue of Southern Communicator, a joint publication of the Australian Societies for Technical Communication of New South Wales and Victoria, and the Technical Communicators Association of New Zealand. It appears here with changes.The picture (crow on coins) used in this article is from http://thenonist.com/index.php/thenonist/permalink/crows_and_coins1/ and is used here with permission.
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