101 Skills
“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.” – Alexander Pope
This post started out as a quick rant about how important it was to make it simple to learn the basic skills needed to function in your firm. Fortunately, as I was trying to finish it off, I realised how naive the post was. I’ve included my original below for a bit of fun and for some public introspection.
Being from an IT background and finding myself continually involved in some sort of IT project or another I am constantly amazed with how little other people know about IT projects. Frequently I think to myself “This is IT Projects 101!” when I come across others who don’t understand unit testing, user interface design or any number of commonplace issues in IT projects. Of course, it’s basic for me because of my experience and education, and I will be the first to admit that there is far more that I don’t know than what I do know.
In the North American vernacular, 100 level courses are synonymous with first-year university courses, 400 level courses for fourth year courses, with a 101 course being the very first in a subject area. 101 courses are simple stuff against the backdrop of the deep and complicated concepts to come. While the standard is not terribly difficult, there are a great many areas we’ve never even gained an understanding of the basics.
There is great undoubtedly a benefit to focusing on one or two niche skills, but it is important in business to understand at least enough to know where to look should something crop up. Budgets are a good example of this. Many are frightened by the annual numbers drill, and the process is made even more unpleasant when accompanied by a crippling lack of knowledge. One of our roles in knowledge management is to make it easy to get people up to a 101 standard.
Here’s a few you may choose to ask yourself in a quiet moment:
- What are the 101 skills people need at my firm? Can they get them?
- What 101 skills am I missing that hinder my performance at work? Is it worth gaining them or can others do them for me.
- What 101 skills to people need to work on my projects? Do I make it easy for them to attain them?
- What inexpensive ways can I find to help people gain these skills?
If you can’t even get the 100 level skills right, why bother with the 400 level skills?
Of course, our resources are not infinite and our ability to make available a basic level of training on every topic is constrained. Further, firms are more likely to be able to make the big money from complicated engagement (400 level skills). In the end I feel firms need to strike the right balance between:
- making 101 skills simple to obtain for those who need them;
- putting people on a path to build 400 level skills and beyond; and
- leveraging subject matters experts in other fields, internally or externally, when needed.
