How I Approached my Skill Growth

Yesterday, I posted about employee accountability on skill growth and not just doing the minimum skill training your manager or L&D department assigns you. Suppose you want to be the best in your craft, like Kobe or Brady. You have no choice. You have to do this.

The other angle here is if you are career-minded or have an interest in things outside your job career path, this is your only choice. A little on my career story.

I worked and went to college at the same time. My first tech job was as a tester. I was QA level 1. They wouldn’t even let me write a test plan. 🙂 All I could do was execute it. Manually…. I knew I wanted to write code and program. So, I paid for extra programming classes at school. I went to Borders. Do you remember that cool bookstore that Amazon killed? I paid for books to learn how to code. I dreamed up projects to code C and C+. I eventually got it. Later, I did this and co-founded two companies, but that’s another story…. All that work was at night and on weekends. Finally, I learned and convinced the company to move me into my programming job. If I didn’t do that, I’d probably be in the QA job family today.

To get to President, COO, GM, CPO, and CTO over the years, I had to do that same self-investment learning technique over and over and over again. I had to pay for my MBA. I had to buy books. I had to search for mentors to help me. I had to push for extra projects. I had to push to be included in executive programs training at Siemens and ADP. I had to push my leader. In some cases, I had to switch jobs because my manager was NOT doing much to help me. All extremely tough things. All time consuming things. It’s not going to be easy, and it will be messy!!!

I’m not comparing myself to the greats like Kobe and Brady. But just making the point, this is what you have to do. It worked for me, and it will work for you. Take ownership of your career. You will have to make significant sacrifices in your time and wallet. But this investment will be the best investment you ever made in your life.

I’m still on this journey, so tomorrow, I’ll post more about what I’m doing now.