Skills Development

My company is adding some new product lines in the next couple of months.  Preparatory to starting production, I was entering all of the components and assemblies into our inventory database, and creating the codes that will manipulate that inventory.  It was a task that combined the need for exacting precision with mind numbing tedium.

Since I am fairly high up the food chain where I work, that got me thinking about whether the task I was working on fit the category of “highly skilled” work.  I concluded that it was.  Although the actual data entry was clerical in nature, navigating the systems and knowing what to input raised the skill profile.  I certainly could not have off-loaded the task to a clerk.  This led me to consider more generally the question of what constitutes a skill?

My model for skills involves the interaction of three separate components: education, talent, and experience.  Education includes everything from literacy and numeracy, through higher education.  It also encompasses task specific training.  This can range from simple job instructions like “Push this button.  Then when the green light flashes, open the mold, pull the part out and put it in the bin.” to brain surgery. 

Experience is the second part of skills.  Often times, training will cover the simplest and most basic scenario for a given task, or set of tasks.  Experience is what you get from the myriad variations that arise over time.  Also, experience provides the repetition that pounds home and cements the gains that training initiates.  The broader the range of experience you can build around a given task, the higher your skill level can get.

Talent is the wild card for skill development.  I could train with a coach for ten years, and never get within a million miles of NBA caliber basketball play.  We’ve all seen bad actors, and we’ve all seen actors who seem to effortlessly create memorable characters.  Talent is the difference.  But talent applies to every field, not just athletics or creative work.  I’ve seen factory maintenance mechanics who can take apart a piece of equipment, figure out what is wrong, and solve a problem, all without ever having worked on that particular piece of machinery.  I’ve known plenty of other mechanics who will work on equipment all day long, without ever actually solving the problem, if they’ve never had that particular problem arise before.  The difference in their work performance is due to that ineffable something called talent.

Talent also encompasses personality traits.  Part of my stock in trade is that I am willing to accept responsibility for the work that other people do.  A lot of people will not accept that responsibility.  That lack makes it tough for them to manage other people.

What does any of this matter?  Well, in an ever-changing economy, the only job security we can muster is by constantly upgrading our skills.  You can’t really do much about your talents.  You either have them or you don’t.  But you can know your talents.  If you combine that knowledge with ongoing education, and seek out an ever wider range of experiences, you can keep increasing your skills throughout your career.