Like the professional athlete who benefits from a coach or trainer's suggestions and objective assessment of his or her performance, you, too, could adopt a series of coaches or trainers in your quest for continuous learning. Some peer groups engage in cross coaching of this nature and have actually formalized the process by hiring accountants, lawyers, and other consultants to coach members of the group.
One of the critical reasons for practicing and upgrading one's portable skills is the continual explosion of knowledge in today's marketplace. You just can't let your skill maintenance slip for any period of time or, like a professional athlete who is laid off due to injury, it'll take twice as much effort to get back to the same level of performance.
On the Job Training
Just as most executives spend the first ten or fifteen years of their careers developing and learning to apply their core skills within organizations, will receive much of his or her skill maintenance and development on the job. In a business setting, it becomes easier for to identify ways of applying his or her skills and to receive the feedback necessary to improve performance. However, while feedback and objective performance appraisal may have been supplied by the organizations once worked for, part of becoming portable involves developing methods of measuring success that are independent of an organization.
The standards of measurement within any given company are specific to that company's purposes and do not offer full time employees or sole practitioners with a portable executive mentality an objective means of measuring their growth and capability development in the marketplace. Portable executives must take the initiative to obtain feedback from their clients in order to enhance the value of their on the job learning.
Portable executives should also consider whether a job or assignment they are offered provides them with any means of skill maintenance or development. Marketing consultant John Trost says: "I'm working for firms that are basically on the edge. It's on the job training to work with those kinds of people because I'm pushed to my limits." If a given job does not offer a substantial means of growth, an executive should probably not spend a lot of time in it. At the very least, who takes an assignment or job with a flat growth expectation should identify and create the opportunity to learn within it. Portable executive Dusty Bricker says:
I guess I am the type of person who looks at a multiple choice question and wants an answer that's not among the choices. When I was in a corporation, I wanted to create things that didn't exist. So if I quickly identify what I'm supposed to do, then I can begin wondering how things could be done a bit differently.
Giving Talks, Speeches, and Serving on Panels
Giving talks, speeches, and serving on panels, although primarily marketing tools, are actually two way learning streets. The process of preparing for these activities alone presents with a way to enhance his or her skills, and audience feedback often serves to refine and develop the material with each successive presentation. Over the past ten years, there has been a tremendous explosion of trade publications and seminars (which focus on various niche audiences) that provide excellent learning and marketing opportunities. Niche publications generally need material, and portable executives will find the trade media open to receiving articles. Once you have published an article or two, it becomes easier to obtain speaking engagements or positions on panels.
Buying Skills
One way can acquire skills is to hire a professional and learn as much as possible from the person providing you with a service. For example, if you hire an accountant or a lawyer during the start up phase of your business, you can then use this basic knowledge to handle those activities yourself.
Though cost should be considered, there are instances when buying skills in this way serves also as a means of improving your own skill base and should be considered part of the investment process. Marketing specialist Carol Frenier hired an accountant for the first six months that she was in business and then took it from there:
I hired an accountant who did a great job, helping me to do projection spreadsheets. I've got a regular bookkeeping system and a good custom made spreadsheet that does cash flow and accruals, which let me, looks a year or two out. I do all my own financial stuff in house, but I send the finished products to the bookkeeper to review them for me.
Formal Education
Just as many professions require that an individual take a certain number of continuing education credits each year, needs to develop his own course of continuing education based on the core skills they have chosen to employ. Trade and professional associations, local universities, and various adult education programs all offer opportunities for upgrading one's skills. In addition, needs to stay on top of all current developments within his field through reading professional journals, and attending industry oriented peer group discussions or round tables.
As weighs the means he will use to improve, develop, and maintain his skills, some further thoughts on skill development are worth mentioning. In a world in which the doubling rate of knowledge seems to be outstripping everyone's ability to keep up, can easily become overwhelmed by the prospect of what it will take to maintain and develop a marketable skill base. The most important thing to remember is that while the world as a whole is changing rapidly, the basic underlying knowledge in any given area of expertise develops far more slowly. It is therefore the ability to apply knowledge that counts. As Joe Cullen pointed out in an earlier chapter, when his colleagues possessed only a smattering of knowledge on a subject, the reading he did in a few trips to the library made him an "instant expert" and enabled him to apply his core skills in a new way.
It is not as important to be the leading expert in a given area of knowledge or business as it is to know how to apply your core skills. Then, as you assess the skills you will need to complete any given project, and gauge how long it will take to obtain or develop additional skills, you need only look to the ever growing circle of portable executives to realize that someone with just the right skills to augment and complement your own is probably just a phone call away.
