In 2020, we did not discuss how the labour force has to outrun the automation-and-AI bear. Instead, we were preoccupied with unemployment, with the pandemic shuffling the deck on jobs across industries. Rightly so. As we hit a reset on this decade (discounting 2020), our need to learn constantly has not changed. If at all, it has grown.

When was the last time you looked around your office or school to see who is doing work differently from you? Or gained knowledge or skill from a colleague, or enhanced an idea you got from a colleague? Can we map out what we learn and what we need to learn?

Based on my observation as a practitioner in the workplace, here’s a framework to inventory our skills. This not a Hogwart’s sorting-hat to put us in a bucket, but a frame to help assess ourselves. Any human skill categorization and cataloging is fraught with pitfalls. I’ve focused on keeping these categories focused on key skills vs. human qualities that contribute to skills.

I think of our skills as belonging to these four broad categories.

1. Technical Skills: Based on our field/domain of study. This category can be broadly sub-divided into STEM (science-technology-engineering-mathematics) and non-STEM.
2. Vocational Skills: Skills we use in the workplace based on the business functions we work in — from developing products or services to selling them.
3. Interpersonal Skills: Being the sentient beings we are, and the need to work with others to get anything of substance done, these soft-skills become more important as our careers advance and our tasks grow complex.
4. Integrative Skills: From simple to complex decision-making, we assemble and analyze information in disparate forms, use our judgement to perform “executive” functions. These skills also assume greater importance as we go from new workers to “seasoned” professionals.

The idea of lifelong learning applies to all four categories above. Arguably, these four categories are shown in the order of difficulty to be good at. Categories 3 and 4 require very aware nurturing to master. These two are such horizontal skill categories, cutting across your field of study or your business function.

Let’s dive into each category in this Technical-Vocational-Interpersonal-Integrative skills framework. T-V-I-I or TeeVee, if you want a mnemonic to remember them by.

1. Technical Skills

I’ve clubbed most fields or domains we study academically into this “technical” category.

This includes, science, humanities, and sports/athletic pursuits. Quite often, our training in these fields determine which industry or vocation we choose when we graduate and enter the workforce.

Much emphasis is placed on STEM-centric education lately. At the same time, there is emerging realization that a blend of STEM and non-STEM (should we call it Root?) education may serve us better in the long-run, so that we may end up becoming more rounded individuals vs. uni-dimensional.

Here is a zoomed-in view of technology fields in STEM to illustrate how old and new technologies are evolving and complementing each other.

When viewed across the four skills categories described in this article, diversification within this technical skills category itself may require us to hone our skills in the other categories.

2. Vocational Skills

The vocational-skills category is about our careers and job functions in the work place — from developing and selling offers in the market as well as supporting the efforts to build and sell those offers, as shown below.

I have used development to denote any type of product or service creation that happens in a company. The sub-roles within it could be engineering, construction, researcher, actuary, film director, content creation in many forms, and so on.

These development roles will vary by industry and closely tied to the technical skills categories in quadrant 1. Given our long careers and the need to stay relevant, switching functions within the same firm or across firms is imperative to keep our skills diversified. E.g. people moving from sales to marketing or from engineering to products and marketing.

Such moves across functions is often harder than acquiring knowledge in a different field of study. i.e. you could learn machine-learning easily if you have a mathematics background, but can you go from engineering to sales? These career transitions require developing skills in the categories below.

3. Interpersonal Skills

These appear self-explanatory at the outset, but mastering them is no easy feat and is in itself a lifelong journey.

For example, it is obvious that communication skills are imperative for our success in work and life. It runs the gamut of non-verbal, verbal, written, unwritten etc. — well expressed in this German saying, “Keine Antworten ist auch eine Antworten” — no answer is also an answer.

Beyond the message content (or the absence of it), we have so many ways and means of communication that in addition to getting our message right, we need to perfect the mechanics of its conveyance. Should we do a LinkedIn message, text message, WhatsApp message, email? Slack? Zoom or Skype? Choices and decisions abound.

Good collaboration is easier said than done when we have a diverse set of expertise, styles, and work-life experiences around our virtual tables. We know that purposeful collaboration is the only way to achieve good outcomes from complex undertakings — be it a workplace project, your startup, or your social-impact endeavour. Compassion serves as a key enabler for both communication and collaboration. You may see references to this skill under empathy.

4. Integrative Skills

Think of integrative-skills category as a decision-making skill category. This set of skills needs to integrate skills and knowledge from other categories to pursue a course of action.

Analysis lies at the root of our decision-making — big or small. Curiosity feeds it, so that we ask the right questions and explore areas that relate to the decisions at hand.

The next two skills in this category verges on the realm of neuroscience. I’ll stay at a practical level and describe them, keeping focus on day-to-day applicability and not their underlying capabilities or human qualities.

4.1 Abstract Patterns, Copied

Our complex brain can recognize patterns across a wide-range of topics ranging from simple drawings, to music scores, to societal changes, as well as copy ideas creatively from one realm to another. Think similes, metaphors, and analogies, when we think of abstractions and patterns.

For a visual pattern example, the Art Deco style Chrysler Building in New York City has arches that resemble fish scales. It has portions inspired by parts of a car. Both good examples of copying and abstracting to create something new. Both apply integrative skills to technical fields in quadrant 1.

Beyond such visual patterns, some patterns could be drawn from different fields of study or business processes.

One of my favorite patterns cuts across skill categories 1 and 2. In sales & marketing, we do lead generation to prospect and close potential customers. Conversion ratios indicate how successful we are in converting a lead to a customer. This is similar to lead-generation in pharmaceuticals ( H2L: hit-to-lead), where, as part of drug discovery, we do high-volume screening to unearth new compounds that have biological or pharmacological value.

Neuroscientists attribute a capability to our brain called compression which lets us distill large amounts of data to its essence, like creating the summary of a book — page after page compressed into a few sentences that serve as the skeleton of the book. Capabilities to compress and copy underlie our ability for abstraction, pattern recognition, and creativity.

4.2 Integrating, Leading, Creating

Finally, leadership skills. We wax over what it is and what it is not. I wrote about business leadership for the digital age some years ago. The core ideas there are still relevant.

In the context of this framework, leadership requires blending skills within and across the four categories — technical, vocational, interpersonal, and integrative skills. We all have leadership skills to varying degrees. Our training and how we develop what we need for our personal and business situations is where we diverge.

Summary

A new year, especially one succeeding the terrible year we’ve had globally, is a great time to examine our skills and careers. I do hope this T-V-I-I framework offers directional insights on how to navigate your decades ahead or create your own frame-of-reference.

How you would categorize your skills? What you think are important for the decade ahead? All the best for a great 2021.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.

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Over decades, I have been lucky to learn from master product management leaders. I have learnt from them the art of specifying and designing hardware, software and service products. I have seen them pricing to extract most value; seen them coaxing engineering, manufacturing, and services teams to get what they wanted. I have had the pleasure of attracting and growing strong product management teams in my businesses.

There are a few cardinals rules of product management that are relevant more than ever in the digital age where technology and business complexity rein on one end; user experience and consumption preferences rein at the other; and options galore on how to meet those requirements. So what is a master juggler of a product manager to do? Well, some rules never change as long as you can apply them for the changed situation. They have to do with specifying right, framing right, and finding the product-pallet fit.

Specify It Right

Product managers get what they specify, not what they wish. If you over-specify, the product will be over budget (time and costs) and will limit the creative options that your architects and engineers can incorporate.

My favorite example of this is the construction of Panama Canal. The canal as we know was made to get from the eastern seaboard to the western seaboard of the Americas. It looks like this on paper.

In reality the canal looks like this.

As the arrow shows, the canal is northwest to southeast in orientation, not east to west.

If Theodore Roosevelt had specified that the canal MUST be east-west, and the engineers had blindly obeyed, one can only imagine the extra cost and the additional deaths from yellow fever that would have befallen Panama.

On the other hand, if you under-specify, your teams will spin, scratching their heads trying to read your mind. The product concept will be changing hourly from elephant to camel to giraffe as teams come to grips with it. Nothing will ever get built.

Frame It Right

Defining the job-to-be-done is not a cliché to be read about and forgotten. If the problem is defined as “build cheap transportation method from A to B” we might end up with Uber; if the problem is defined as “build cheap car for millennials”, we’ll end up with a compact hybrid electric. Or if the problem is defined as “enable team collaboration”, we may end up with Slack; “enable groups to talk” may result in conference calling. None of them is outright wrong. Your organizational context determines which is right.

Know the ultimate job to be done, then frame the problem at the right level for your organization.

This is true whether building a cool cloud-controlled drone widget or you are building a beautiful wall. (Sorry, couldn’t resist!)

Find the Product-Pallet Fit

Another truism we all know is about finding the product-market fit, especially in early stages of your business. However, in complex product markets, the channel’s needs are equally critical just as the end customer’s needs are. Your product design has to accommodate for that or you will end up having a camel that doesn’t fit the pallet it gets shipped in. Or you’ll build a train that is intended for broad-gauge tracks, but the tracks are still narrow-gauge.

In the digital age, value chains are getting knotted. So channel considerations need to go right into the product design. Without product-pallet fit, you will not have the market reach or hit scale.

Write it Down! Pyramid or Cube?

Finally, if you haven’t seen this advertisement, watch this and remember to always document your specs. At least you’ll have something to show your management should things go wrong despite your best efforts.

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Unlike other elections where I had been a passive voter, easily picking who I thought was a better candidate without much thought, this time I was paralyzed. Beyond passive. Just numb. I found myself closing my browser tabs and turning off my TV in utter exasperation and disgust. Many times I joked about it and pretended it was a new comedy show in bad taste.

It all changed last week. It changed when I sensed an eerie silence around me when in social gatherings people refused to engage in election talk; at work people could not brooke a joke on the election; on Linked In you heard crickets if you said something remotely political. We couldn’t speak. Not surprising when even objective journalists found themselves gasping at flagrant inconsistencies and illogic in the party-line from campaigns. I saw journalists agonizing over when to challenge vs. back off to provide listeners an objective view. Still the business leaders stayed silent.

Silent not just on who to back or what their position on issues were, but on what criteria to use to guide one’s decision-making. Silence prevailed from social media influencers (perhaps all were wise than me). But if this election is unprecedented how can we be silent and passive as usual? How can we watch intelligent, consciencious voters muddle through a barrage of hearsay and bias and semi-factoids?

Should business leaders air their views on elections and candidates? Of course, not for a candidate per se. Why not argue for sound public policy, argue for strong leadership, or voice criteria we should use to evaluate candidates and parties? Crickets sang out loud on all those fronts. And I found myself getting beyond comfortably numb. Needing to stay sane amidst the babel of voices, I decided that I needed a framework to base my decision. A framework to evaluate a leader since I view the presidency of the USA as being first and foremost about leadership.

I went back to basics and looked at what I thought highly in leaders and remembered my article from three years ago. A post titled “Leadership Blues” on the 3Cs of leadership: Curiosity, Compassion, and Collaboration.

3Cs of Leadership

Call it temperament, EQ, self-awareness, or any of your favorite yardstick for leadership, we need some criteria for decision-making when faced with a confusing landscape such as this year’s. Hence, I am gravitating back to the 3Cs. The extent to which people have possessed these qualities or acquired them seem to have made leaders like Lincoln, King, and Mandela effective and inspirational.

While I’m troubled by the choices us chickens are left with, this is not a new phenomenon. Democracies have suffered from this problem forever. In fact some would cynically say a country gets the candidates it deserves. If so, we deserve candidates that split us on racial, gender, and economic lines?

Not to be cynical, my voting decisions this year, as someone who thinks America isgreat and is a fine experiment in being humanely correct, will be based on the 3C’s — choices based on the extent to which I think candidates possesses the 3C’s.

To silencing the crickets!

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Is leadership like music
With its many kinds
Some we like and some not
Music nonetheless

Are there hues to leadership
Like the Blues
Delta, Chicago
Texas and more

Are leaders like these players
Breaking norms to add colour
Like King Albert’s skilled left
Pluck righty guitar to bend our ear

How did they tick
Was there a beat, was there a meter
A turn of phrase
An emphatic pause

Are these the three C’s
Of human leadership
What would suffice
Beyond these

Happy 2014.

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