Growth generations: current skill levels < growth rate of your skill levels

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By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 4 mins

Summary: 

  • Good managers help change directs’ growth trajectory (see building innovation ability in others)

  • Good employees are able to grow themselves. 

  • Great employees grow themselves AND can show their growth trajectory… through ‘growth generations’.

  • Jingle: everything you do should be the best thing you have ever done. 

What are ‘Growth generations’?

  • Each instance of growth opens up the next level, or generation, of growth...and each level is exponentially better than the one before. In fact, you could say that growth generates new growth, as long as you reflect on it sufficiently.

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 Some examples

  • Edrolo Product

    • G1: we find the best teachers and give them scale

    • G2: G1 + we provide the best teachers with boundary conditions so they don’t trip up unnecessarily (eg total course length, eg individual lesson length)

    • G3: G2 + we give guidelines for what to include in a lesson (eg formally break down a lesson into component parts, summary, definitions, analogy, model, interactive question)

    • G4: if we do in house content development we can spend more time on content development and collaborate more effectively. Done well this should unlock new emergent outcomes. 

  • How to identify the root cause to help others:

    • G1: person is a good / bad employee

    • G2: person has strengths and weaknesses

    • G3: strengths and weaknesses have strengths and weaknesses :) (eg someone is good at managing a certain type of person but bad with another type of person)

    • G4: G3 + when looking for the root cause, did it originate from the individual (I used to assume far too often things originated with the individual), others (eg someone has poor tone because someone provoked them vs the individual originated the tone) or the environment (eg looming deadline is causing stress leading to poor tone)

    • G5: G4 + including how ‘emotional tank levels’ for all parties at G4 can affect things (eg if someone is in a really bad spot their comms tone might be far worse because of this, eg if you are really drained today you are probably looking at the world more negatively than is fair)

  • Leadership

    • G1: does a good job

    • G2: G1 + communicates with the company about direction

    • G3: G2 + communicates about why the long term is better than before (ie potential of how much the company can positively affect humanity has increased year on year) + shows how in the short term the company has ‘learned’ (can be learned what to do or what not to do)

    • G4: G3 + has a proactive strategy to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of the company. IMO this is effectively like running an internal media company. Basically a significantly more involved and complex version of G3. Often companies will have a Public Relations team for managing the external view of a company. IMO companies should often have an ‘internal’ Public Relations team to try and have the company know what is going on. 

You don’t learn from your experience, you learn from reflecting on your experiences. 

  • I often only improve my approach to a problem… when I spent time writing about how to improve my approach. 

  • One key component of this is trying to write out how my approach has changed historically.

  • Writing = thinking

    • Then often magically I’ll be able to see the next generation because of writing out the past generations. 

    • So weirdly, writing growth generations = creating the next generation! 

    • The prefix ‘auto’ means ‘self’....so you might even say that writing growth generalisations = auto-generating growth!

  • *aside: this is very similar to ‘taxonomised thinking’. 

  • So... writing growth generations = improving your growth trajectory

  • Writing growth generations = how to level yourself up if something didn’t go well

  • Writing growth generations = how to show others you are growing which means you should build credibility (hopefully meaning more opportunity AND more remuneration)

  • Writing growth generation = help others stand on your shoulders (learn from your learnings)

  • Writing growth generation = cultivating growth mindset

Writing ‘growth generations’ for the core parts of your role = professional development

  • IMO for the core parts of your role try and write down ‘growth generations’ every 6 months as part of ‘job performance review’. 

    • If you are not growing you are atrophying… and atrophying I find… terrifying!   

  • Some more equations because...

    • Writing growth generations = giving to yourself as you build your ability

    • Writing growth generations = giving to others as you help them incorporate your learnings

    • Writing growth generations = giving to your team as done well writing growth generations means you build credibility with others in turn meaning respect and interoperability level up :) 

    • Writing growth generations = selfish, selfless and… sublime :) 

  • … even more equations because why not?

    • No growth = job boredom 

    • Someone helping you grow = being given a fish

    • Figuring out how to help yourself grow = teaching yourself how to fish = building innovation skills

    • Writing growth generations = (for myself) good fun!