“A talent stack is the overall value or sum of an individual’s skills and talents.” (Ben Ford)

Scott Adams (author of Dilbert) hinted at this in an older blog post. Being the best at the world at one single thing is almost impossible. Becoming good at (e.g. top 25%) at two things can be more valuable and also far easier. This can be extended further to additional skills. Even going from bad to mediocre in a skill may be extremely beneficial. It’s the combination that matters.

I love learning new things. I love trying out new things. I recently decided to try and learn to draw. At first this was just disappointing. My first efforts were awful. Here’s my first attempt at a plane, a bagel and a house!

Lots of people think you should just stick to what you’re good at. Eg Seth Godin “focus on doing things you are truly good at” or Desmond Courtney “Focus on what you’re good at and forget the rest.” That seemed excellent advice after seeing the first results of my drawing. I really should have stopped the drawing immediately. I’m no artist. I’ll never be. I should stick to development and management tasks.

I stuck with the drawing for a while though. With just 30 days and this book I tried again. Here’s my “take 2” of a plane, bagel and house. (Plus a few extras I learned.)

I’ll never have my work on display in the Louvre. But it was great to get the basic understanding and learn a new skill.

In a more recent post Scott Adams highlighted the benefits of having “a collection of good-but-not-special skills that sum up to something powerful.” The combined result is far more than the sum of the parts.

I think you should always double down and try and become truly excellent at a few skills. But this shows it’s also worth investing time in other non related skills. Good enough with the right combination can be extremely powerful.

The questions you need to answer are:

• What are the specialist core skills that you want to truly excel at?
• What other skill would it be worth investing in in order to make your skill stack extra valuable?
• Now you have the list what are you going to do to learn them?

If you’re not sure what skills to look into next then you may want to look at this list from Jason Calacanis.

30 hours invested in drawing has made a massive difference to me. It makes running workshops and meetings a lot easier. I can jump up and draw things on a white board. I can sketch out presentation outlines more easily. It has given me far more confidence. It was definitely a good investment for my talent stack!

There’s no point in the theory if you never put it into practice. Learning new things is interesting but making use of the new knowledge and turning it into a regular habit is far more important.

Now, I’m not a really a gym person but I recently joined a gym. It happens to be on the 3rd floor, yet the majority of people take the lift up to the gym.

Let’s think about this for a second. These are motivated people who want to get fit. They’re paying money to the gym so they can exercise on machines. Yet even when they’re in their workout gear they ignore the opportunity of a warm up and don’t even walk up the stairs. The irony seems almost too much, this inconsistency seems absurd.

(This gym is even worse!)

Taking a step back from this made me think about the last conference I went to. I came back inspired with hundreds of good ideas and improvements that I could make. As soon as I got back to the office however I got caught up in the day to day business and didn’t implement any of them.

This is like me taking the lift up to the gym. I’ve made an investment of time, I’ve been actively involved, I have learnt something new. That’s all good, but the important thing is to use this new knowledge and put it into practice in the real world.

The question I’d like to ask you today is: “Does this sound familiar?” Are you investing time studying but not actually putting the new knowledge into practice? Are you reading blogs on new frameworks and technologies but never trying them out? Are you reading about code quality and unit tests but never writing any tests?

“But what should I do?”

1. Start small. If you’re trying to improve your code quality then write just one unit test.
2. If you do read an interesting article or attend a seminar on an interesting topic. Make sure you take action that day. Don’t think about it, do it! Before you leave the seminar write down one thing that you can do.
3. Positive Reinforcement. Celebrate the small wins. If you’ve written a unit test then you’ve made one small step to improving quality. That’s far more important than wishing you had good test coverage but doing nothing about it.

Gyms provide a dedicated and specific place to work out. Yet most gym goers miss simple exercise opportunities like taking the stairs or walking a few blocks. Individually they’re not much but if done continuously through the day and they become a habit and it can have a bigger impact than the gym.
Likewise there are plenty of ways to learn new technology skills from blogs, online courses or conferences. This is your “dedicated” time, make sure that you follow up with regular “mini workouts” that are part of your regular daily routine. The “doing” and putting into practice will actually make a bigger difference.

Striking the balance between freedom and ensuring consistency is difficult. As a leader you need to be one step ahead of your team in order shape the decision making process.

Take for example these two pictures of toothbrushes. They belong to my sons, but who has the green one?

We always have trouble getting our boys out of the house in the morning. If they forget to clean their teeth then this means another time wasting trip upstairs. There was an easy solution, a 2nd set of toothbrushes downstairs.

As a way to get them more excited about this, I let them choose the tooth brushes themselves. It was only when we got home later that I realised our older son had a green toothbrush upstairs and a orange one downstairs. And our younger son had a orange one downstairs and green one upstairs.

So the lessons…

1. Be consistent: Scaling processes inconsistency can lead to more confusion
2. As a leader you need to look at the bigger picture. Give your team freedom but place constraints on them and ensure consistency is a requirement
3. Doubling resources or capabilities in certain areas can avoid bottlenecks but don’t forget the extra overhead and maintenance of keeping them running.

Involving your team in the decision making process is critical. Just think carefully before offering them too much freedom which may then lead to inconsistency.