Books, Nuremberg, and Paris

Whenever I’m involved in an interview, I always ask a candidate what books they read. I do this mostly because, all things being equal, I want to work with people that read books.
I literally grew up in a bookstore! My father owned “Grandpa’s Used Books” the first used bookstore in Utah valley.
I learned to read sitting in some back corner of the store, joyfully reading some of the best and worst literature this world has to offer.
I can remember my first official reading assignment – Tom Sawyer, I believe – the children’s illustrated classics version.


For the first chapter, My dad told me to write down every word I didn’t know. There I was, happily scrawling nearly every third word onto a note pad, completely unaware of the horrible, wicked task my dad had in mind with that growing list of words.
I finished the chapter, and proudly turned in my list of words. My dad looked it over, nodded, and said, “okay…now go look up all these words in the dictionary so you know what they mean.” NOT. My favorite moment…..
I finished the list, with some effort and not a small amount of complaining. You can guess what my next assignment was: “Read the next chapter, and write down every word you don’t know….”But THIS time, I was smarter! Somehow, miraculously, this chapter only had FOUR words in it that I didn’t know. My dad said, “this is the list, eh?””yep”He opened the chapter, to the first page….”what does this word mean?…..what does this word mean?….what about this one?….”I got to re-read that chapter, writing down EVERY word I didn’t know….and the pattern of abuse continued!
But –
To this day, I love reading. I am absolutely in love with words – their definitions, and the etymology behind them. (by the way, if you are the same, there’s an amazing book called the Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth. Hands down my favorite book outside of scripture).

Thanks to my dad and that initial rigor, I love to read.
I especially love to read history. I like to glean lessons from history, to see the origins of words and ideas and inventions and processes…

You see, history has patterns to it. When something new or amazing happens, it is rarely something that happens by itself. Simultaneous invention is quite common. [https://www.cracked.com/pictofacts-687-12-inventions-created-by-different-people-at-same-time/](https://www.cracked.com/pictofacts-687-12-inventions-created-by-different-people-at-same-time/)

Joseph Swan, patented 1861


Thomas Edison, patented 1879
The best explanation for this phenomenon – inventions being developed separately yet simultaneously – is what Steven Johnson calls “the adjacent possible”

As technologies advance, and as individuals stop to think those advances, patterns emerge. It doesn’t take a genius to see them. It just takes a little time, determination, and intuition to “connect the dots”
Once enough dots are connected, and as processes are refined, these new ideas become established science.
This process – this “Slow Hunch”…


…leads to not just the invention of some few things, but rather to many, many more inventions!There are so many patterns out there, with more appearing every day – and we can study these patterns, identify our own unique set of dots, and refine them into even more new inventions and processes.
At Pluralsight, we’ve been thinking about some of these patterns
and we’ve applied them to Skills Development.
Now, this isn’t rocket science,

but given the principles and patterns we’ve identified so far, it _is_ science.
And we’ll continue to refine that “science”, and apply it in the form of best practice recommendations for our customers and partners.

We’d like to share some of the principles and patterns we’ve identified with you. We don’t expect much (if any) of this to be new to you. Going back to the concept of the adjacent possible, we’re sure you are seeing these same principles and patterns. We hope this reinforces and encourages your own developing best practices, and if you see something new today, great! We’d love to get your commentary on it.
The first principle is going to sound really obvious, but it’s an important one….


We have found that not everyone treats Skills Development the same way they would another critical business initiative.
There’s often not the same amount of strategic planning and effort that goes into other initiatives, and therefore some efforts fall short of creating true business impact.
Most companies start with topic-based conversations, taking advantage of various tools, platforms, and training resources.
Your teams know where their biggest pain points are – the topics and technologies they need for their projects – and you’re likely already doing a good job at getting them what they need. This topic-based approach is pretty common, and serves as a solid foundation….

…As a company’s skills strategy progresses, it moves towards streamlining training efforts – identifying common skills across departments and optimizing the learning process for new team members.
To make sure learning resources are effective, analytics and integration with existing systems becomes increasingly important.
Skills start to be identified and grouped together (usually in the form of roles) and standards are developed, as skills training becomes more proactive.
The overarching goal is a consistent, effective skills development process, inline with HR objectives.

…The breakthrough comes when we start to have Objectives-based conversations. When we shift from talking about usage and compliance, and start serious discussions about driving true business impact.
Emphasis is put on building a Culture of Learning, which (just like a culture of innovation) is a compelling recruitment and retention tool. The opportunity to learn new skills is a currency. People want to work for a company that encourages innovation and personal growth.
This kind of conversation is truly strategic. It requires more than obtaining the right training, or streamlining processes, as great as those things are. It requires our organization to treat Skills Strategy like any other part of our strategy. Vision and sponsoring from leadership, careful planning using first principles, and execution towards driving true business impact.

This next principle is a little less obvious, but becomes clear once we look at some historical examples, and apply them to skills development.

First, let’s identify what it took to put a man on the moon.
Well….if we’re really honest about it, it boiled down to money and time.
You would think that we would be able to gain enormous insights from studying the project management techniques used during the Apollo (and subsequent NASA Lunar Space) programs — there had to be some stroke of genius, some optimized way of working, that elevated us to the greatest technological achievement in human history…
But there really wasn’t — NASA was an entity of the US government.
Like all government entities, it was slow, bureaucratic, with redundancies and waste enough to make any product manager these days vomit just a little bit.
But they had money. A LOT of it. Over 2% of the entire GDP of the US, or over 700 BILLION dollars in today’s money.And it took them just short of a decade.
This was not a lesson in efficiency or genius. It was certainly an amazing achievement of the human will, but there aren’t any lessons to be learned…. Or are there?….
That is a picture of the damage to the Apollo 13 space module.
It should be smooth like a cylinder, but all the vital elements of the module – including the oxygen tanks! – are splayed out like entrails.
After the explosion, the crew of Apollo 13 had almost no chance of survival. And yet they survived.
They survived because every protocol, every carefully crafted checklist and form of bureaucracy was thrown out, and decisions had to be made in minutes instead of months.
They survived because an entire army of skilled, experienced technicians were empowered to solve problems by any means necessary.
And it is a perfect example, albeit accidentally, of Agile principles in action.

The fundamental concept of Agile boils down to this: we trade control for results.
We tell teams what to build, and trust those teams to figure out how.
Apollo 13 forced NASA to apply Agile principles – over 3 decades before Agile was even a concept!
One more quick example:
[www.transworldbooks.co.uk](http://www.transworldbooks.co.uk)
Immediately after Toy Story 1, Pixar had magic in a bottle.
They wrote the story for Toy Story 2 documented their processes, and hired a new crew to work on it while the original Toy Story crew produced A Bug’s Life.About halfway through, they realized they had a serious problem on their hands. Toy Story 2 was a mess. The new crew didn’t have the experience they needed, and they were floundering.
The original crew had to quickly finish A Bug’s life, and then both crews worked insane, unsustainable hours to rectify Toy Story 2 in time for release.
This required 14+ hour shifts from everyone, including a husband and wife that worked in separate departments. One day they went to work in separate cars, each thinking that the other one had dropped off their baby son at day care. The baby was out in the car park, in the sun. The baby nearly died, but fortunately recovered.
It was a wake up call for Pixar. They put safeguards in place, and implemented policies to give their employees a true work-life balance.
They also recognized their core mistake:


They had assumed that if you had a perfect story, and a perfectly-documented process, that you would be successful. They realized through that Toy Story 2 experience that it wasn’t the story that was the most critical: it was the people. They became the first major movie studio to completely change their development department from one that develops stories, to one that develops _people._
This change – this exchange of top-down control for results – was a large contributor to the overwhelming success and undeniable quality Pixar was able to achieve.

Now, how does this apply to Skills Development?


We think it applies directly.
Think about the current state of most Skills Development:

– Identify Skills Gaps, based on business need
– Develop a detailed, complete “map” of all skills and content in a “framework”
– Require some parts of that map to be watched by all learners, for compliance and skills development reasons
– Measure success by activity – hours/courses watched, etc
A waterfall plan works great!…..if you have a known problem with a known solution.
But Tech skills are not a known problem…

The pace of change is so rapid, and the demand so fierce, it’s impossible to keep up with. It’s a FOREST FIRE. And you can’t document a forest fire.
So, you CAN’T control it – not to the level we try to. You can’t….but you also don’t want to:


You want teams that act independently. You want individuals that think strategically, and are autonomous and empowered. You don’t encourage those types of people by dictating what they watch. You have to enable them, empower them, and get out of their way.
There are practices and patterns that can help you to do that, and through our Professional Services Team, we can help you to do just that. Here are some example patterns and best practices that you can apply:

First, apply the principles and values of Agile, customized to your skills development circumstances.
Put Individuals above processes,Put Skills Development above detailed Skills FrameworksAnd build a flexible system that doesn’t rely on some “master plan” that is out of date and rigid.

What the specific application of these principles will look like for your organization will vary. There are some common best practices that apply in most situations, and really help you answer the “how” question:

We have found that there is an inverse relationship between prescription and experience.
If someone is new to a topic, it’s very effective to say, “watch this course, then this one, then this one…” – It’s a best practice to create **core** channels.
Once they gain experience, it rapidly becomes _ineffective_ to prescribe specific content, and you should instead point them in the right direction through an _area recommendation_, and allow them to self curate. These are called **reference** channels.

Skills Frameworks and detailed career ladders can get complicated. The mechanism we use in our ProServ Skills Strategy Plans (or SSPs) to simplify those models is a Skills Matrix.
Simply listing functional areas across the top…
…and major skills areas down the side, connecting them with a literal matrix…
Creates a **clean separation** between your career ladders and the skills you need to develop.
By connecting skills to functions through a simple “yes” or “no” removes complexity, allowing leaders and HR to focus on performance reviews and job leveling, and enabling direct managers to build decoupled personal development plans with their direct reports.
An added benefit that shouldn’t be overlooked:
Skills Matrices reduce cognitive load.
Instead of having to spend a LOT of brainpower trying to picture how all the different skills fit in to all the different roles in an organization, a Matrix just SHOWS it to you. All the energy and effort it used to take to imaging the model is conserved, and can be spent discussing strategy instead.
Next up, be sure to leverage the Pluralsight Platform, which has been specifically designed to rapidly develop tech skills. We take care of the how, so that you can concentrate on the what.


An example of this is our Skill Paths —
Skill Paths are not just a collection of courses. They are master designed from the ground up, using a skills blueprint and a specific pattern of progression…
Overview
Foundation / Getting Started
Practicum
Common Use Cases
Specialization / Starting points
Take Python path as an example…..
Another example is Skill IQ / Role IQ


Objective Assessment
Encouraging, showing progress
Personal / psychological safety
Tailored Recommendations for accelerated learning
For the “last mile” it’s a best practice to leverage Pluralsight Q&A


Proprietary /secure information – stays in house, but still allows you to share freely.
Fills in the gaps
Encourages teams to work together
Rewards Merit
—-
We don’t have time to go into every best practice, and how to specifically apply them.
We’ll be happy to talk with you afterwards and give additional details or have future conversations with you, to help you be successful….


Let me put in a quick plug for our actual services –
Put simply, we can elevate your Skills Strategy.
From integration with your systems, to concentrated learning via workshops, to expert onboarding and skills alignment, our professional services provide scalable, proven skills development via the Pluralsight platform, accelerating your skills transformation.

We can help you implement the patterns and principles we’ve spoken of, providing best practice recommendations and insights. And the biggest benefit? By providing you with a consistent, scalable skills baseline and applied best practices, we free up your experts, mentors, and training teams to focus on the more specialized and valuable aspects of skills development. They can concentrate on the tech skills that make the highest impact to your business.
Zooming out a bit, we’d like to talk about one last principle:


In working with hundreds and hundreds of companies, we are convinced that the single most important determinant of success is a company’s commitment to a healthy culture of learning.
How safe do your employees feel about learning during work hours? Is skills development time allocated, protected, and specific?
Are leaders held accountable for skills development? Is part of their compensation based on it?
Do projects have skills development / research time allocated, which makes the projects longer, but increases success rates?

One more lesson from history…
Does everyone know what an Andon Cord is?…Post WWII Japan
Manufacturing industry – lots of output, terrible quality
“lip service” to quality – assembly line stops for NO ONE
Deming, Toyota way – installed Andon cords
-EXPECTED. Entire line STOPS. Never have the problem again.
Go from 2 weeks to 2 hours to change out a car hood stamp.
The history lesson here is: It was “expensive” to install those andon cords.But, it would have been more expensive not to.
Enormous benefits that come from a healthy culture of learning:


Build vs. Buy — how expensive data scientists are
Sparks Interest, employee satisfaction (skills are a currency)
Creates a common language / baseline – elevates the conversation
The last, and perhaps most compelling reason:
You only need one hit — One major innovation, one new line of business, one key differentiator.You never know where that will come from….by investing in your people up front, and earning that Culture of Learning, you will get that one major hit – and maybe even more. But remember, it only takes one to justify the investment.
Summary


As we mentioned at the beginning, there’s nothing new here – these are our observations as we refine those patterns, and connect those dots.
We encourage you to emphasize the strategic part of skills strategy.
We firmly believe that applying Agile principles to Skills Development – trading control for results – will improve your chances of success.
There are processes and tools (including the Pluralsight Platform itself) that can assist you in doing this, and if you want some extra help, let’s get a Professional Services conversation going.
And last but not least, install those “Andon cords”

• Allocate additional time on projects
• Make psychological safety and personal development time a priority
• Hold leadership accountable for building a healthy culture of learning

We hope you found this valuable, and we are always interested in collaboration opportunities. If you’re working on something similar around skills strategy, let’s get connected and compare notes.

Summary

A comprehensive exploration of skills development, innovation, and organizational learning, drawing insights from historical examples and emphasizing the importance of adaptability, continuous learning, and empowering individuals.

Categories

• [Reference]
• [Presentation]
• [Research]

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Key Points

• Successful innovation emerges from patterns and “the adjacent possible”
• Agile principles prioritize results over strict control
• Continuous learning is a critical competitive advantage
• Skills development should be strategic and adaptable
• Empowering individuals is more important than rigid frameworks

Action Items

• Develop a flexible skills development strategy
• Create psychological safety for learning
• Implement Agile principles in skills training
• Design learning channels that adapt to individual expertise
• Build a culture that values continuous learning

Connections

• Organizational Learning Strategies
• Innovation and Skill Development
• Agile Methodologies in Professional Growth