Professional self development: an essential tool to cultivate yourself, an essential capability to build inside of companies.
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 9 mins
One Sentence Summary: you don’t want to reinvent the wheel (have no Professional Development)… but you don’t want to not be able to invent new things (not be able to do Professional Self Development); Professional Self Development is a core component of being able to invent new things (to do things you’ve never done before).
From Professional Development to Professional Self Development
You aren’t born able to talk, do maths… or necessarily make new concepts (Professional Self Development). But someone made all the concepts you learn at school.
One goal of the education system = to be eventually able to educate yourself.
Professional Self Development = being able to educate yourself / invent new things
Innovation is not magic. Innovation is a process, innovation is inevitable, innovation is predictable. Blog link 1, blog link 2.
Professional Self Development = 1. Figure out what you want to improve at * 2. Time trying to develop * 3. Modalities of time (reading / thinking / talking / writing / building) * 4. Approaches (4.1 micro + 4.2 macro + 4.3 sustained)
See below for details
It might sound like ‘Professional Self Development’ = creativity / doing things you’ve never done before… and IMO this is not unfair. Can you have a system for creativity? IMO yes!
Jingle: get busy living getting good at Professional Self Development, or get busy dying doing only what others have done previously at work.
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Detail
Professional Development (learning how to do things others have done before) Vs Professional Self Development (figuring out how to do things you have never done before)
Some people ask ‘how good is your professional development program?’ I think this is an important question…
… but I think perhaps an equally important, or even more important question is, ‘how good is your company at fostering Professional Self Development?’
Professional Development = 1. Ideas invented outside your business + 2. Ideas invented inside your business
Good ideas come from everywhere, try to find the best ideas and implement them. Search externally, find the best ideas, then find how to apply them in where you work. If you want a framework for one way to do this consider using Bloom’s taxonomy
Example Professional Development for an idea like MECEing:
1. Remember: explain the idea of MECEing
2. Understand: show the idea of MECEing be implemented in a work context.
3. Apply: ask the person to apply MECEing to a few case studies
4. Analyse / Evaluate / Create: then ask them to report back on how they used MECEing in 2 instances in the next fortnight.
For most businesses to thrive they’ll need to also invent things in house.
Once something has been developed enough to be broadly useful then codify the idea and turn it into a piece of ‘Professional Development’.
*note: i find most things are developments of existing ideas and / or joining together 2+ existing ideas. Very rarely is something entirely new.
Something I’d consider to be ‘Edrolo-ish’ is the making of equations to explain things. As an example when making questions for secondary education we normally use a ‘question ingredient equation’. I’ve found the ability to create equations to explain some component of the world better massively valuable (it’s not the only way to explain something, but it helps increase your ability to articulate and hence understand). A blog on this is here.
How professional development could look:
1. Remember: read this blog
2. Understanding: show the idea of making equations to explain things in 1-2x examples at Edrolo
3. Apply: get people in the professional development to use equations to explain in a few case studies
4. Analyse / Evaluate / Create: then ask people to report back on how they used equations to explain 2 things in the next fortnight.
Professional Self Development - IMO a necessity if you want to do things you’ve never done before
I’ve written about one rearticulation of this previously - “Reportability vs Responsibility: people often think they want a new job, but what they want is more responsibility”
One rearticulation of this is that as you progress through life IMO your mix of ‘Professional Development : Professional Self Development’ should change.
When you first start working post school / university it’s likely that 90% of what you need to do should be through training AKA Professional Development.
But if you want to make a big difference to the world often you need to do something that’s not been done before. So eventually I think you want to be able to get to a point where 90% of your development is coming from ‘Professional Self Development’, ie you levelling yourself up!
If we heavily rely on Professional Development, it creates a ceiling of what we can achieve. However, if we’re able to embrace Professional Self Development, we can break that ceiling, and the sky’s the limit. Onwards and upwards!
Professional Self Development = 1. Figure out what you want to improve at * 2. Time trying to develop * 3. Modalities of time * 4. Approaches (4.1 micro + 4.2 macro + 4.3 sustained)
1. Figure out what you want to improve at
I normally spend years on trying to improve at specific things. The longer the better :).
Step one is figure out what you want to get better at (aka Professionally Self Develop at).
Here are 3 areas I consciously try to improve at:
1. Running a business (for example much of the writings on CloudStreaks are about this)
2. Building secondary education resources (I write weekly or more about this internally at Edrolo)
3. The vision for Edrolo (I write and talk about this much internally at Edrolo)
2. Time trying to develop
I find that you almost invariably get better at the things you spend time trying to get better at…
… and that you almost invariably don’t get better at the things you don’t spend time trying to improve at.
More time spent on ‘Professional Self Development’ = better than less time :).
Amount of professional self development = 1. Quantity * 2. Quality
1. Quantity = I spend 5-20 hours a week on Professional Self Development… this is wildly up from eg 25 year old Duncan.
2. Quality = this is about doing this well “3. Modalities of time * 4. Approaches (4.1 micro + 4.2 macro + 4.3 sustained)”
3. Modalities of time
Main modalities: reading, thinking, writing, talking & building.
If I’m trying to improve at something I consciously spend time on all of these modalities each week.
For example if I’m trying to improve (Professionally Self Develop) at “2. Building secondary education resources” I’ll try do the following:
1. Reading: I’ll listen to education related podcasts, read education related academic research, look at other products, read books, etc for a 3+ hours a week.
2. Thinking: as an example after each podcast episode I listen to education I’ll pause and think about eg ‘how do we apply this idea to Year 7 Maths? how could we apply this idea to Year 7 Science? etc etc’.
3. Writing: I’ve personally found this to be the most valuable strategy for Professional Self Development. The ROI of writing is WAY higher than ‘1. Reading’ for me. If I want to improve at something (Professionally Self Develop) then I write about this thing every week.
A big part of the problem is ‘what to write about?’. The discipline of writing every week means I synthesize properly each week. The cumulative outcome of writing each week for years is IMO other worldly. If I could give 5 years ago Duncan advice, it would be ‘write every week on how to build edrolo as a business and write each week on the product of edrolo (ie secondary education resources)’.
4. Talking: I spend time each week doing ‘freeform talking’ about the major areas I’m trying to grow.
Freeform talking meeting = trying to explore an idea. (Edrolo internal: an example of this is Content Weekly meeting)
Decision meeting = consider options of what to do and make a decision about how to move forward. Eg you need to pass judgement on an idea (vs freeform is attempting to understand, add to, level up, etc an idea more. You can figure out how to use an idea later)
5. Building: if I’m trying to get better at “2. Building secondary education resources” then I’ll try to spend time building some secondary education resources every week. Eg helping make questions for Year 7 Maths.
Link to Bloom’s taxonomy:
1. Remember: Reading
2. Understanding: Thinking
3. Apply: Writing
4. Analyse / Evaluate / Create: Writing, Talking, Building
4. Approaches (4.1 micro + 4.2 macro + 4.3 sustained)
4.1 micro = write / read / talk / build about a small piece of the picture. Try and see if you can make a new piece, etc. One rearticulation: what is the next step.
4.2 macro = write / read / talk / build where you are creating the picture and can see where things fit. One rearticulation: where are we going.
4.3 sustained = write / read / talk / build about the same thing for 5x+ weeks. For example talk about the idea of ‘conceptual vs procedural understanding’ for 10 weeks in a row.
In many respects the quality of a company is the quality of its people. IMO typically the most value additive people are those best able to do Professional Self Development.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” JFK.
Ok, yes, ask what professional development a company can do for you… but also see how much professional self development you can do for yourself and as such how much value you can add!
Each division of a company is different, so what works somewhere doesn’t work everywhere. This is what I try to do for the parts of businesses I’m involved in:
2 hours of Professional Development every week. For example Content Weekly with associated reading, writing and talking.
I personally think we want as many people as possible doing 4+ hours of Professional Self Development a week.
What do I personally do:
40-50 hours of execution a week.
Help build ~2 hours of Professional Development for my team each week.
Do 5-20 hours of Professional Self Development a week. As an example one of the main Jobs To Be Done of the CloudStreaks blog is ‘Professional Development’ for my team.
Edrolo Content Context: Product outcome = 1. People quality * 2. Recipe quality * 3. Machine quality
IMO we want to level up each of these every year.
I see a core component of “1. People quality” as Professional Self Development time and ability.
If you only take away one thing
Done well, I’ve found Professional Development to be fun, but with an ‘end’ or a limit.
Done well I’ve found Professional Self Development to be funner, and with no defined end. The limit is you.
Done well I’ve found Professional Self Development to massively improve my ability to help Edrolo, and to improve myself.
The best things are selfish and selfless.
Done well I think Professional Self Development should mean you grow faster, but also in ways that are more value additive.
Getting good at Professional Self Development should mean you are able to get good at anything.