Train on - train off

Tomorrow I am heading off with my boss to visit one of our other offices in Finland. It is going to be an early start for the two hour commute but we have decided to use the time continuing my onboarding process to help me get up to speed. I have to say that while there is a mountain of things for me to learn, I can't fault the company in their support for new recruits, this is the difference between a startup looking to grow and an established enterprise business. Allocation of resources.

Because they are looking to grow there is a great deal of uncertainty involved in precisely what tasks are going to be required and therefore there is a lot of hands-on training and development of their people ongoing as they shift from the startup phase to the growth phase. With a massive amount of growth over the last few years, they are also looking to develop their internal culture and thankfully, they are taking an approach that I know well, develop their people to support the success of their customers.

It has been great to get a view of this side of the onboarding process as over the last few years, I have assisted some of my clients develop their processes of how onboarding should happen. I deal with a few traditional companies that have very well established guidelines and stable business models which means they often forget how to welcome new people in and get them performing quickly. Instead, they tend to hire people they know have the skills to hold the status quo, give them a desk and list of tasks to get on with.

What I have liked is that this company and especially the training department where I reside is spending a lot of time and effort developing the philosophy of the company itself and the expectations and accountability associated. With many of the employees coming from some of the largest companies tech companies in the world, establishing and renewing the startup curiosity in each recruit from the get go s an important factor for their future success.

It is something that Steem could benefit from as while people find themselves here with various forms and quality of help along the way, one of the things that many struggle with the most is the paradigm shift from centralized, authority-based systems to the freedom and responsibility of a decentralized environment where one must tackle questions of security, anonymity, transparency, governance, economics, technology and of course all of the complexity involved with having many people with various ideas and ideals about the way things *should be voicing their opinions and acting in just as many different ways, many conflicting even with themselves.

Aligning personal requirements with the encouraged incentives of the platform is difficult for an individual and incredibly hard for a group that has no uniform onboarding process. It is no wonder that so many people struggle as the learning curve is not only a very steep and largely shrouded journey, it is nearly entirely a process of self-learning, something many people tend to fail at unless very interested in a topic. With such a diverse range of learning requirements to really get the most out of Steem and feel a part of the larger community, few are able to close the gaps.

There are projects coming that will help this process along the way with @coruscate and @anomadsoul developing the @steemonboarding experience that will hopefully improve the speed and understanding of new users as well as direct them toward potential communities where they could find a home.

The simplification of Steem for the initial user is going to of course ultimately come through the applications that develop their user experience efforts, but that process is still some way off. For now, it is likely still a complex system where new users will struggle as while they might be interested in learning about one aspect of the ecosystem, the other points get ignored altogether as they are not required on the centralized platforms.

The control of the centralized platforms isn't in their power to empower or disenfranchise users, it is in their ability to get users using the system without having any actual control over much of significance. The centralized platforms control all aspects of the technology, security, governance, transparency and of course, the users have close to zero access to any of the economic advantages generated. While the learning curve is short and shallow and the user experience clean and attractive, the tangible advantages to the user are very limited and there is very little choice available to change even the slightest of factors.

This is a massive paradigm shift for many people as they come to realize just how little control they have over their content and actions when they are finally given near full control on Steem. This leads to many just acting in much the same way and taking a short and shallow learning curve approach rather than understanding the fundamental differences and potential advantages of residing in an environment as free as Steem.

What I believe though is that regardless of how things progress, it is always the people who take a wider approach to learning how many components work and how they work together to create various dynamics, who are best able to take advantage of the environment. While the complexity is relatively high on Steem, mid-range understanding of the entire ecosystem is quite easy to learn over time through broad interaction. What this also increases is the chance to be able to connect interest areas and leverage the platform capabilities to better fit the individual needs and of course, personality.

In time I think that those who make the effort to really learn and discover the capabilities of Steem will be glad they did as there are many aspects most basic users don't understand. Understanding doesn't come through being told, it comes through experience which means, one has to do the work in order to gain. Of course, anyone can and should come in and use Steem at whatever level they choose but, for the ones that are willing to get more uncomfortable and play outside of their sandbox, the greater the benefits.

The more you learn, the more you earn, and that is true on and off Steem.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]