How to learn something new

In the last 12 months I have learned more new things than probably in the last 5 years alltogether and I need to admit that those learnings curves were not always beautiful and inspiring. Regardless of that, I still say it was a good thing.

One thing I criticized the most about corporate IT was the lack of willingness to go way down to the essentials of IT business. Everything has been somehow assigned to suppliers, partners etc. In my last role, we were not even able to produce slides without at least one consultant present. Something that deeply frustrated me in the big corporate world.

Therefore, I am a big supporter of building up skills inhouse - be it the slide-gurus or the data analysts. But what you once handed over to suppliers is not something you can just reverse - I call it collective memory loss or in other words: no one knows how to get the job done.

During the last 12 months, I have had to painfully learn that re-learning things is harder than I thought. My 3 strategies - in the order of impact

1. Back to School: Be it ‘to simply Google it’ , online seminars, workshops or a book - it can be as simple as that. Unfortunately, if no one is pushing you to do it, usually it remains with doing nothing and taking the ‘supplier route’. The willingness to educate yourself whilst on the job varies heavily on your environment. Which leads me to the next point

2. Learn from the Best: Hiring people that help others to understand a topic better and are willing to share and encourage others are pure gold. e.g. if you want to accelerate your cloud migration, hiring someone who has done that before and acts as a multiplicator for you is worth every Euro you spend on that person. It sounds so simple, yet we often forget that people need guidance and inspiration to move on. Which again leads me to:

3. Get your hands dirty: Somehow pushing yourself to get back to e.g. the retail floor if you take over a role in retail or sit in the call center or even doing a 2-3 week internship if you change the industry. It sounds dead simple, yet no one has ever done it. I meet a lot of people who say on Management Level you don’t need to know every detail and I agree on that fully. (Nothing is more annoying than a Manager who wants to dive into every detail.) BUT, clearly seeing in practice how the business runs is invaluable. One note upfront: If you are in Management and you come for a visit, everything will be prepared for you. The key is to stay that long, that authenticy will kick in.

Matthias and I have been working a lot on the book and whilst doing so we have always asked ourselves how we can find answers to the most pressing questions from developers to management, and vice versa. Learning from your own people might be a good starting point.

Happy Learning,

All the best, Sophie