10/09/2016–I’ve found certain skills leverage such basic and fundamentally human traits that they’re applicable across multiple fields, industries, situations, etc. These are known as “metaskills” (hyphenation rules make me think it’s not appropriate but you’ll see it written with them).
Most skills are more narrowly applicable–event planning and cooking, for example. Planning events and cooking certainly leverage a variety of skills, but they’re not themselves widely applicable as they are. The parts of them which are widely applicable are more likely to be worth studying–things like prioritization and pattern recognition.
These are the highest ROI when it comes to general learning, except for any skills which are needed for whatever is most important to someone (e.g. cooking skills are higher ROI for a chef). Otherwise, metaskills help in so many situations their value is practically limitless. Unfortunately, the term “metaskill” isn’t yet common, thus academic programs and workplace training have yet to design for the concept. Sure, we are told to “develop time management skills” in school and work, but what if third graders were taught the Pomodoro technique?
Now, “customer discovery”–what if every undergrad program required students to learn how to identify the stakeholders in their proposal in advance, interview them to discover their biggest pains, design their proposal to alleviate those pains, and teach others the process before graduation? Every teacher, engineer, physical therapist, entrepreneur, chemist, and actor would enter the workforce able to meet unmet needs effectively across the board.
As with “customer service”, customer discovery is a business-oriented process but could be adopted anytime one identifiable group member feels pain or has a desire related to their area of work. As an HR professional, I must make recommendations to decision-makers. My “product” is a recommendation and my “customer” is the decision-maker. Why don’t HR programs teach the skill of learning what matters to our customers? It could be argued that more time is spent teaching HR to learn the desires of the company’s customer–an indirect, virtually irrelevant stakeholder to HR.
Rather, the effective communicator is he or she who has–ideally, well in advance–identified what their audience/customer truly desires and incorporates that into their proposal/product/etc. Perhaps the underlying skill, or a complimentary skill, is interviewing. I’d consider it a metaskill to be able to make a person comfortable enough talking to you to get them to share the info you’re seeking. Of course, this skill could be used ethically or unethically, but it’s a metaskill either way. This, and the customer discovery process as a whole, is the classic, entrepreneurial approach–
- Either witness an unmet need or recognize your unique AND VALUABLE ability/passion
- Find out who cares
- Design and prove a solution for them
Conversely, it is not a classic HR/education/medicine approach to meeting unmet needs. It likely can be found among the best in any field, though.
QOTW–“Willingness to talk to anyone about anything is great!”
?FNW–Does Aks get to stay? Yes.
11/29/2017 review–Lean innovation is huge right now, and it reemphasizes the principles of customer discovery. Steve Blank’s book The Four Steps to the Epiphany describe his take on the process of validating the claim that your customer exists. It truly is a metaskill to be able to do this, as it employs the universal truth “would you persuade, speak of interest not of reason”.