GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore
A colleague recently forwarded me an article about upskilling one’s team. I am on board with the first part—innovating from within—but I am not comfortable with the concept of “upskilling.” Here’s why.
Upskilling implies that the challenges you face lend themselves to known skilled responses. Combined with the idea of training, it also implies that you have that skills knowledge already in-house and simply need to transfer it to a new cohort. I can see both of these ideas being applicable to technical work, but I don’t think they reflect the realities of knowledge work. There, instead, I think we need to substitute learning for training and experience for upskilling.
Whereas training puts the responsibility for a successful outcome on the trainer, learning puts it on the learner. In the world of knowledge work, that’s where it has to sit. We need to develop ourselves—no one else can do it for us. But we need experience to do so, and this is where managers can have a big impact. It is not the training we give our teams but rather the assignments we entrust to them that let them build new muscles.
Assigning an inexperienced person to a new challenge is always a risk—for them, for their manager, and for the customer of the work to be done. Unfortunately, without risk, there is no learning. There is no risk-free way to learn. So the manager’s goal is to create opportunity while mitigating risk.
One of the best means for so doing is assigning people the role of the Single Accountable Leader (SAL). The need for a SAL arises in any cross-functional initiative where hierarchy of authority is replaced by team collaboration. Just as a football team needs a quarterback to run a play that involves 11 people collaborating toward one outcome, so does a cross-functional initiative need a single accountable leader to be the focus of decision-making as the team adapts to unfolding events. This person need not be an expert. They need to be vigilant. They need to stay on top of things. They need to inquire and inspect, to detect when the effort is going off course, to focus the team on redirecting it, to get counsel from their mentors, and to escalate issues that are beyond their ability to address. Most of all, they need to care.
When people care, they learn. They go the extra mile. They bring out the best in others. And in so doing, they build the new muscle that will qualify them for a larger role in the enterprise. This to me is career development at its best. The SAL assignment is the most precious gift that managers and mentors can bestow upon their charges. I hope you can take advantage of it.
That’s what I think. What do you think?
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