The QA Skills Scan

In November 2020, I completed a skills self-assessment using a tool produced by the QA (the  Skills Scan: Digital Technology Solutions Degree Apprenticeship Level 7). This provides a useful baseline. It also helps identify areas and priorities for personal development

The tool is aligned to a particular course (M.Sc. Digital Transformation Specialist) and its associated Apprenticeship standards. It uses a five point scale to record self-assessed knowledge, skills and behaviours for groups of dimensions

The assessment has two parts: a common core and a second section for the selected specialist pathway (for me, this is Data Analytics).

The five point scoring system is a defined as follows:

Rating scale for knowledge
1	I have no prior knowledge of this area
2	I know what this is but only at a basic level
3	I have some knowledge of this subject
4	I have a good understanding but have never been formally assessed or applied it in my workplace
5	I have comprehensive knowledge and understanding, plus a qualification to demonstrate this.

Rating scale for skills
1	I have no skills in this area or have never done this
2	I have basic understanding but no practical experience
3	I have some practical experience in this outside of the work environment
4	I have experience applying this skill in the workplace, but need to continue my training
5	I have performed this skill regularly and competently for more than a year, and have qualifications to support this

Although six of the core dimensions are behaviours,  no specific definitions are given for rating behaviour. 

The lowest point on the scale is 1 which is used for zero knowledge or skills i.e.  you score a point even if you know absolutely nothing and have no skills of experiences in any of the dimensions .

The highest point on the scale is 5 which is quite exacting as the criteria specify ’… plus a qualification to demonstrate this’ and  ‘…and have qualifications to support this’

A lot of the dimension descriptions have overtones  of 'management speak', including doubling up .They could be split, simplified and made more specific and measurable.

The  following are details of the scores I gave myself (November 2020)

Core knowledge	Self-Rating
The strategic importance of technology enabled business processes, and how they are designed and managed to determine a firm’s ability to compete effectively;	3
The principles of business transformation and how organisations integrate different management functions in the context of technological change;	2
The role of leadership in contemporary technology based organisations;	3
Own employer’s business objectives and strategy, its position in the market and how own employer adds value to its clients through the services and/or products they provide;	4
How to justify the value of technology investments and apply benefits management and realisation;	3
How to monitor technology related market trends and research and collect competitive intelligence;	3
The personal leadership qualities that are required to establish and maintain an organisations technical reputation.	3
The role of leaders as change agents and identify contributors to successful implementation;	3
Technology road-mapping concepts and methods and how to apply them;	2
The role of learning and talent management in successful business operations.	2
Inspire and motivate others to deliver excellent technical solutions and outcomes	4
Establish high levels of performance in digital and technology solutions activities	4
Be results and outcomes driven to achieve high key performance outcomes for digital and technology solutions objectives	3
Promote a high level of cooperation between own work group and other groups to establish a technology change led culture	3
Develop and support others in developing an appropriate balance of leadership and technical skills	3
Create strong positive relationships with team members to produce high performing technical teams	4

 

 

Core Skills	Self-Rating
Identify, document, review and design complex IT enabled business processes that define a set of activities that will accomplish specific organisational goals and provides a systematic approach to improving those processes;	3
Design and develop technology roadmaps, implementation strategies and transformation plans focused on digital technologies to achieve improved productivity, functionality and end user experience in an area of technology specialism;	3
Deliver workplace transformations through planning and implementing technology based business change programmes including setting objectives, priorities and responsibilities with others in an area of technology specialism;	3
Negotiate and agree digital and technology specialism delivery budgets with those with decision-making responsibility;	2
Develop and deliver management level presentations which resonate with senior stakeholders, both business and technical;	4
Professionally present digital and technology solution specialism plans and solutions in a well-structured business report;	3
Demonstrate self-direction and originality in solving problems, and act autonomously in planning and implementing digital and technology solutions specialist tasks at a professional level;	4
Be competent at negotiating and closing techniques in a range of interactions and engagements, both with senior internal and external stakeholders;	2
Evaluate the significance of human factors to leadership in the effective implementation and management of technology enabled business processes;	3
Develop own leadership style and professional values that contributes to building high performing teams;	4
Apply broader technical knowledge combined with an understanding of the business context, and how it is changing, to deliver to the company’s business strategy;	3
Demonstrate effective technology leadership and change management skills for managing technology driven change and continuous improvement;	3
Create and implement innovative technological strategies to support the development of new products, processes and services that align with the company’s business strategy, and develop and communicate compelling business proposals to support these.	3

 

Data Analytics Specialist Core Knowledge	Self- Rating
How key algorithms and models are applied in developing analytical solutions and how analytical solutions can deliver benefits to organisations;	2
The information governance requirements that exist in the UK, and the relevant organisational and legislative data protection and data security standards that exist. The legal, social and ethical concerns involved in data management and analysis;	4
The principles of data driven analysis and how to apply these. Including the approach, the selected data, the fitted models and evaluations used to solve data problems;	3
The properties of different data storage solutions, and the transmission, processing and analytics of data from an enterprise system perspective. Including the platform choices available for designing and implementing solutions for data storage, processing and analytics in different data scenarios;	2
How relevant data hierarchies or taxonomies are identified and properly documented;	3
The concepts, tools and techniques for data visualisation, including how this provides a qualitative understanding of the information on which decisions can be based.	4

 

Data Analytics Specialist Core Skills	Self- Rating
Identify and select the business data that needs to be collected and transitioned from a range of data systems; acquire, manage and process complex data sets, including large-scale and real-time data;	4
Undertake analytical investigations of data to understand the nature, utility and quality of data, and developing data quality rule sets and guidelines for database designers;	4
Formulate analysis questions and hypotheses which are answerable given the data available and come tostatistically sound conclusions;	3
Conduct high-quality complex investigations, employing a range of analytical software, statistical modelling & machine learning techniques to make data driven decisions solve live commercial problems;	2
Document and describe the data architecture and structures using appropriate data modelling tools, and select appropriate methods to present data and results that support human understanding of complex data sets;	3
Scope and deliver data analysis projects, in response to business priorities, create compelling business opportunities reports on outcomes suitable for a variety of stakeholders including senior clients and management.

Truncating the descriptions allows us to produce a more compact summary, trimming off the 1st point, as it is always awarded:

 

This  highlights the areas which, in November, I felt I most needed to improve. Clearly these self assessed scores can both rise and fall, the former as I learn more, the latter as I understand more.

I am hoping that the course will go some way towards providing a qualification pulling some of the dimensions up to 5.In some cases it is hard to see how there could ever be a relevant qualification at all. Moving all the dimensions scoring 2 up to 3 would be an reasonable and achievable priority.

 

My horizons

The scope of our activities and thoughts can viewed at many different levels. This can be visualised as a series of extending horizons. 

The number of horizons, and the names we give them, can be cut and re-cut in different ways. The main feature is ever increasing extension.

The illustration below is a rendering of one of my sets of horizons. It is based on the 'dimension' of my work, which is for the UK National Health Service (NHS)

Because this model is based on healthcare, I have stopped at the horizon of the World. Even with Elon Musk's best, and most grandiose aspirations to make mankind a multi-planetary species, I do not expect there to be interplanetary healthcare within my working lifetime. If I were to look at other dimensions, my horizons might go beyond the confines of The Earth, to infinity and beyond.

I could construct entirely different schemas for different dimensions of interest, such as natural history, music or politics. For example, here is a model of my horizons for bird photography

I could produce many similar horizon models for differing dimensions of interest.

Sometimes, a model such as this is described as a series of  'onion skins'. This analogy is reasonable, although it does not stand close botanical inspection. Better comparisons might be made to a 'Russian doll' or even to the colours on a 'gob stopper'.

Having a model of horizons is not an end in itself. It only has meaning if we do something with it.

A module I am doing as part of a course leads me to consider a number of questions and issues across successive horizons.

For example, if I want to reflect on the nature of competition,  digital maturity, or the likely impact of an innovative digital disruption, I will have a different transaction depending on the horizon  I choose.

Cutting across any of these horizons, potentially, is the dimension of time. We can look forwards, or backwards, or stay, largely, in the present. 

Take, for example, the horizon of me, in my work context:

Often, I may be distracted by the present and very immediate future. Day to day this is quite likely in a busy, stressful job. If I stand back, I might look back over the time in my current role, or my time with my current employer. I might look further back at previous jobs or right back to the early days of my education. Equally, I could look forward a few weeks, months or years, imagining future states.

The horizon of my team is likely to be somewhat different

Technically,  this present team has only existed since June 2020, although I have known and worked with all the members of the team for much longer. Similarly, given the NHS penchant for reconfiguring, I would be surprised if this same team still existed in two years.  The time horizons are by nature much more short term, and generally looking forward rather than back.

Similar considerations apply at the horizon of my organisation

This current NHS organisation has only exited, legally,  since  October 2019. I would be surprised if it  still existed in October 2024.

 

It could be argued that de facto organisations are much more persistent than the legal entities which encapsulate them.  The official shape of the organisations change but there are very resilient constituent cultures, and organisational units, which persist through many nominal changes. New NHS organisations do not start with a clean state, they inherit the assets, ways of working, problems and quirks of their precursors.

Crossing a time dimension with any relevant horizon model produces many different loci in which to dwell, to reflect,  to plan. Our day to day state will tend to push us, by default,  into a limited number of these. It would be very risky to spend an hour thinking about the history of the NHS when your report to the Board is due in 6o minutes.

 

But there is value in looking in the compartments outside of our immediate horizons and time zones. What we need is a  trigger,  or structure,  which enables us to do this. Sometimes perspective can make us calmer - yes our activity has dropped this month, but it does the same every year - don't panic!

How I learn

I see myself as a  person who never stops learning. I like the idea of that. What I am not sure about is whether I am learning as much or as well as I could be. 

I have some insight into what works well for me. I have some insight into what does not work well.

Classroom learning does not work well for me. I recognise a pattern in which I start off thinking that things are going too slowly and everything is obvious. Then I hit a block - an issue or idea or technique which I do not properly understand, After this, I feel the course is going too fast, running away from me.

I seem to be much better with self-directed learning. I can teach myself by reading, thinking and experimenting. If the learning is quite technical then it is helpful to be able to call on help occasionally if I get stuck. But, generally, I can work through technical material quite well, so long as I control the pace.

Another pattern I recognise when learning in a group revolves around my perception of how well I am learning in comparison to my peers.  Early on, there can often be one or two prominent individuals who appear to have grasped the material immediately and are confidently reflecting it back to the facilitators. At this point I may still be struggling to assimilate new concepts or language. As time progresses, my understanding and confidence improve. Later, I start to feel, on occasions,  that the prominent individuals  understand this stuff a lot less well than I do. I do not feel the need to demonstrate that I understand the material. I can go further into darker thoughts that prominent individuals are asking questions not because they want to know the answers to anything but more that they simply want to be noticed.

So there is clearly something going on with the amount of  time and the amount of detail I need. I think what I am doing is checking and testing every aspect of an idea until I am happy with it. Then I relax.

I looked recently at Honey and Mumford's leaning styles. I assessed myself as being predominantly a Reflector/Theorist rather than an Activist/Pragmatist. But the assessment showed me that I have elements of all four learning styles.

As I get older, my learning, and my beliefs, seem increasingly shaped into patterns. My experience becomes generalised. I can be 'clear' what my experience tells me but if asked, sometimes I can struggle to recall details of a single actual example. It is as if the detail is no longer important, once I have the pattern, I dismiss it

There is an increasing shift towards e-Learning. I welcome this because it allows me flexibility in time and place and access to a wider range of choices. A couple of years ago I decided to teach myself R. I discovered a wealth of e-Learning courses online and subscribed to DataCamp where I completed about 20 courses. My observation of my behaviour with e-Learning is that I can complete modules quite quickly  and usually get very high marks (hooray!). But  I notice I may not retain a lot of the knowledge. I think my primary learning  can drift into how to complete the assessments - there are clearly techniques for this - rather than remaining on the intended subject matter. 

One specific area of learning which I have a lot of experience of is music. I had music lessons as a child and found them unsatisfying. Later, as a young adult, I wanted to learn to play. I mostly taught myself, with a little peer to peer learning, such as swapping guitar chords and riffs. Over the years, I have dabbled in a wide range of instruments and styles. Most recently I have tried to limit the range. I have also pushed myself increasingly into playing without sheet music and learning tunes by ear. I have played in public as well as in pub sessions and private house gatherings. I can improvise and compose music, some of which is played by other people.

One important observation about my own music learning concerns practice. I used to over-practice - sometimes play for several hours, desperate to master a particular tune or technique. Now I do the opposite. I practice for very short periods, quite often but not to any regular pattern. Experience has shown me that this works best.  There is something interesting that continues processing in my brain after I have stopped playing. The following day I can often play better than I did when I was last practicing. It is as if my brain is still working on the task when it is no longer in my focus. Over-practising may be detrimental in blocking out this processing or overloading it.

Another thing I have spotted is that I have shifted  in how I learn tunes. Initially it was repetition of psychomotor patterns. Now I need to have the tune in my head before worrying about actually trying to play it on any particular instrument. Once I know how the tune goes  - such as that I could hum it to myself - it is a short step to being able to play it. 

I think I am learning - to some extent - all the time. There are points where I go into a mode of deliberate learning - attending a course or webinar, seeking out knowledge, but even outside of this there is learning going on

I learn from watching what other people do. I learn a lot from observing other people's mistakes. I do this from the relative comfort of the sidelines. I have heard much talk over many years of 'blame free culture', 'learning organisations' and many other things pivoting around learning from things that go wrong. I also see the primordial career instinct to avoid admitting or drawing attention to mistakes.

When things have conspicuously gone wrong, it is not unusual to hear the managers caught up in it come out with the phrase 'lessons have been learned'. This has two interesting nuances. Firstly it can appear to be an acknowledgement that things went wrong, without really acknowledging any individual responsibility. Secondly, it suggests some process of reflection and learning  - measures which we would all hope and expect will help prevent a recurrence. But if asked specifically what lessons have been learned and by whom, there can be a unnerving silence. 

There are techniques used in investigating explicit incidents, e.g. root cause analysis, which can help make valuable learning available. But getting people to see its relevance to them can often break down 

So a major factor in learning is seeing the relevance of something. If I can see the point of learning, I am halfway there. The converse is also true: if I can't see the point of something, I can build a big pile of negativity in front of it

Edgar Bolton. 

15/03/2021

Any views expressed above are purely mine and should not be mistaken for those of any organisations or individuals I have been associated with

What goes wrong with Webex 'breakout' sessions

I have recently started a new digital experience: doing a course by remote learning. In many respects this is great, for example, removing the  need for four hours of tiring and stressful driving.  In other respects I am unsure. The  Technical and Digital Leadership (TDL) module was based around a three-hour weekly teaching session delivered via Webex. A significant part of these sessions were allocated to small group work, operated as  Webex  'breakout' sessions.

Webex 'breakout' sessions provide the ability to mark up virtual whiteboards for each group. These can be shared back to the plenary session and discussed. In this, it is very similar to the ubiquitous flipchart and marker pen feedback of pre-digital groupwork.

So this style of learning is a digital innovation which I am experiencing for the first time on a course about digital innovation.

My observation is that there a number of factors which tend to make these digital breakout sessions unproductive

Choice of exemplar organisations

In the first class, when small groups of students were thrown together into breakout groups for the first time, people tended to relay experience back from the organisations that they worked for. This was valuable

Very quickly thereafter, whenever groups were asked to relate the questions to an organisation, the emerging choices invariably revolved around a small number of high profile organisations, Amazon/AWS. Apple,   AirBnB,  Tesla, etc. These tended to be the ones heralded in the course material as examples of highly successful disruptive innovation. The organisations were often talked about in terms of charismatic leaders, e.g. Elon Musk, who although fascinating are far from easy to emulate.

So rather than relay valuable insights from our  own experience,  the groups engaged in speculation about a small number of organisations that none of us had any direct experience of. We imagined what the culture of these organisation was like; we imagined what the charismatic leaders were like to work for. The result was generally shallow guesswork. We set up a feedback loop which further narrowed our collective attention onto this same small set in the following exercises. It is as if subconsciously we were trying to echo back what we were expected to think, rather than what we actually thought.

There was no challenge. We did not challenge each other, perhaps out of politeness; the tutor did not challenge us, perhaps in the spirit of valuing all contributions. But the contributions were not equally valid and they were not grounded in our experience. Nothing refocused us. It became uncritical.

Too many strands, too little time

Very frequently, groups could not get to end of all the strands of the breakout session tasks. So material intended to be covered in the latter part of tasks was frequently not covered at all. Rather than give every group every element, we could have given each group a different element. 

Too much similarity

The tasks appeared to overlap in content and the groupwork responses certainly did

Too little preparation

The tasks set in the groupwork assumed that all the week's set material had been studied in advance. Very often students had barely looked at most if it. This meant that, for me at least, the sessions were often working one step behind  rather than one step in front

Time used 'therapeutically 'instead of on the task set

On several occasions, students used the time in the breakout session to exchange feelings about aspects of the course, perhaps because there was no  alternative forum for this. While this served  a purpose it did not serve the primary purpose

Usual groupwork features

Tended to be the same people acting as group leaders. Their feedback was often disconnected from what he group actually talked about. Some individuals were passive and let everybody else do the talking

Honey and Mumfords' learning styles

To get the most out of any learning opportunity, we need to understand how best to approach it. This includes understanding how we learn and how others may learn differently.

The learning styles tool devised by Honey and Mumford, a development from earlier work by Kolb,  is used widely. 

It categorises people as belonging to one of four types:

• Activist
• Reflector
• Theorist
• Pragmatist

These types  have a profile which suggests the ways in which each may prefer to learn 

Based solely on descriptions of the profiles, I estimated to the nearest 5%, the extent which I thought  I matched each of the four. This rapid self-assessment came out as follows:

I identified most strongly with the Theorist learning style and least strongly with Activist

I decided  to find out how closely my view of myself matched how I would be 'properly' assessed.

Various versions of assessment tool have been developed to help categorise people into the four styles. From Honey and Mumford themselves, there is a 'basic' 40-question version and also an 'extended' 80-question version. There is a variety of online material, including some web based renderings of assessment tools. It is not obvious how faithful these are to the originals

I found a couple of free, online assessments.  In both, I was bemused to find that I was assessed as being a Reflector not a Theorist. The tools were based on 40, or so, questions. 

I needed to find out how the assessment tool worked

I  located a copy the more extensive (80 question) version of the tool. In this one, the scoring system was laid bare. The results of applying tool are presented against my original self assessment as follows:

There is a broad similarity between my approximation and the scored position. But the overall outcome places me most, again,  in the Reflector category, although with Theorist a close second.

The scoring schema shows that each question - which must be answered true or false  - is designed to tip towards one learning style

For example Question 73: I do whatever is expedient to get the job done Yes/No?

Yes is a mark for Pragmatist. No is no mark

There is an inherent problem with this kind of scoring system. We are expected to come off the fence and pick either Yes or No. Once Yes is picked 100% of the mark is awarded. This construction is sometimes described as 'forced choice'.

It may be that most people are not really strongly polarised in their behaviour. Few people would always do whatever was expedient to get the job done; few people would never do what was expedient. Perhaps this is more of a spectrum in which behaviours are aligned something like the bell-curve shape of the normal distribution

The 'forced choice' system makes no distinction between a person who is barely one side of neutral and one who is strongly polarised. Both these widely differing types would be scored the same  

Another issue is that the fewer questions that are answered Yes, the more influence answered questions have on the outcome

A way to mitigate against this would be to replace the Yes/No  1/0 scoring system with a graduated system. Most people will be familiar with the Likert method now used extensively in feedback surveys

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neither agree nor agree
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree 

This would allow  degrees of affinity to be expressed

This 5-level system would allow 'fence sitters' such as myself to steer a neutral path straight up the middle of the entire 80 questions. So, to retain an element of forced choice, I set up an alternative 6-level  scoring system. In this, each question could be answered  with one of 0, 0.2, 0.4. 0.6. 0.8 or 1 to express the degree of affinity

When I retook the 80-question test using my 6-level graduated scoring system, my results came out as follows:

This rebalances the outcome slightly more in favour of Theorist. It also boosts the Activist style. I suspect  that by the time I retook the test with the graduated scoring system, I had sufficient detailed knowledge to make subconscious skewing likely.

Over each of these cycles, the picture emerging is that I am some kind of  Reflector/Theorist rather than an Activist/Pragmatist. But I can also see that I have elements of all four styles.

The mechanisms of the standard assessment tools used to assess Honey and Mumford learning style can be criticised in that they over simplify in to two stages: 

Firstly, the forced choice scoring system represents behaviour as polarised extremes

Secondly, arriving at an outcome of a single learning style may obscure significant  contributions of other styles. 

While the assessment processes may have are some pitfalls, the model may help us understand our current and past learning experiences.

The big question is what to do it.

If we recognise our dominant learning style and plan our future around that, are we enhancing or constraining future learning? Probably both. If we stay within the comfort of our preferred style we will make good progress.  If we break through the discomfort of other styles of learning, might we be able to learn even more?

Edgar Bolton

09/03/2021

References:

https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/doctoralcollege/training/eresources/teaching/theories/honey-mumford

https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/doctoralcollege/training/eresources/teaching/theories/kolb

https://www.eln.io/blog/honey-mumford-learner-types-1986-questionnaire-online

http://www.emtrain.eu/learning-styles/

 

What leadership means to me

The words ‘leader’ and ‘manager’ are not synonyms of each other, although there is common ground between the two roles. I became a ‘manager’ (nominally ‘supervisor’) for the first time, aged 22, when I was appointed to a job above the lowest level of a hierarchy. I only really began to become a leader later. There was an intermediate state which I would describe as being a ‘group advocate’, representing the collective views and interests of a group but without necessarily overly pressing my own ideas. But the critical aspect, which for me encapsulates leadership, is the ability to inspire people to follow you. 

I have completed many training events which purported to teach aspects of leadership.  These include

• Lead and manage change in health and social care. Open University.  OpenLearn.  Level 3 Advanced. Completed 2018. 
• Coaching Skills Workshop. Cumbria Learning and Improvement Collaborative (CLIC).  2017
• Improving Leaders. CLIC. 3 day course.  2017
• Successful Team Leadership Masterclass. Prof Stephen Singleton. CLIC.  2017
• Making an Impact and Influencing Change. CLIC. 2016
• Leadership Development programme.  Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. 10 one day workshops 2009

On reflection, much of the NHS training seems to have been as much about management, or influencing skills, as about leadership in the purer sense. The focus is predominantly on 'leading your team' rather than leading beyond your team. 

Arguably, these days, the term 'leadership' is being overused to the point where it is losing its meaning and being absorbed into the vocabulary of 'management speak'.(and in management speak 'leader' and 'manager' apparently can be synonyms of each other).  For example, I may hear a colleague refer to having 'led a team through a major transformation' when to an outside observer there seemed little more than that they were in post when a change was underway.

Successful management leans heavily on leadership skills. This is at its most essential when attempting to manage volunteers, which I have done in two previous roles (as an archaeologist, when running a mental health voluntary organisation). I have also worked as a volunteer and observed the leadership that I was inspired to follow. It takes effort and skill to recruit, retain and motivate volunteers. Unlike paid employees on a contract, if volunteers are unimpressed they can simply walk away.  The critical leadership skill here seems  to me to be the ability to transmit a genuine passion and belief in the value of a common cause. It is something which I would say is nearly impossible to feign, certainly for any length of time longer than a job interview. People are adept at spotting a fake. Any leader, or manager, will struggle, increasingly, if they 'lose the dressing room'

Reflecting on my own exercise of leadership skills, I see that I operate in two different modes, which loosely mirror extravert and introvert personality types. 

In my extravert mode, my leadership behaviour is tangible and explicit. For example, when I led Carlisle MIND, I proposed and drove a significant shift in the purpose, focus and activities of the organisation. I championed user empowerment  and user representation in statutory service planning. Some members of the organisation, notably some of those who also held statutory sector roles, were uncomfortable with the shift. So, to succeed, I had both to mobilise support and counter opposition. I was elected and successively re-elected as Chair of the organisation. I think the main reason for this was that I believed 100% in the direction we were taking. I learnt a lot about leadership at this time.

In my introvert mode, my leadership behaviour is more subtle and often may not even be recognised by many colleagues. This can include pressing for the adoption of my own ideas or for the introduction of good practice which I have encountered elsewhere. I appear to think in a different way to many colleagues.  One side of this is a flow of ideas, such as the eCPA system, a digital innovation used by my NHS organisation for 15 years. I had the vision, developed a prototype as a 'proof of concept', then obtained senior management backing and IT help to implement and develop the product further. My approach here seems incremental, enrolling support slowly. Sometimes, for the ideas to be taken forward, it is even  necessary to allow selected senior people to believe  - or at least claim- that they have thought of them. Rather than present the ideas as a 'sales pitch' headed by myself, I convince influential individuals who then back and propel the ideas for me.

Recently,  I have enrolled on a course (M.Sc. Digital Transformation Specialist, University of Northumbria) one module of which is 'Technical and Digital Leadership'. This course forces me to consider whether I think that there is a significant difference between 'Digital Leadership' and 'Leadership' in the wider, general sense.

Cleary, there can be a space, and a need,  for  'Digital Champions' in many organisations. Recognising the potential of digital technology, suggesting, promoting, driving its use, are all leadership activities. 

Can a Digital Leader refuse to transact non-digitally, or disengage from non-digital projects? The natural end point for a such an extreme form of digital leader would be to completely replace themselves with an  'Artificial Intelligence' application,  leaving as a legacy a product which would continue to tweet its own suggestions long after they had gone. 

A real-world Digital Leader has to accept the imperfect current state whilst always striving for improvement. Reach may always exceed grasp, vision extend beyond the immediately obtainable. It helps to chip away at organisational culture by demonstrating as many new digital ways of working as possible. But going too far too fast risks being dismissed as a 'gadget man', the 'nerd' trap. And it is important to recognise that sometimes a non digital solution may be quicker and more flexible (for example a pencil and a sheet of A3 paper often outguns any computer application - in my hands anyhow). So a Digital Leader needs a deep understanding not only of digital possibilities but also about the readiness of the organisation to respond to them. 

In terms of seeing and selling the big digital vision, this is not really different to how ideas have been promoted and implemented for centuries. A good understanding of digital technology is a great help, But it may not be the major requirement for such a role.

My LinkedIn profile    https://www.linkedin.com/in/edgar-bolton-7a992b25/ 

The Career Success Pyramid

Devised by James Brett and presented as chapter 4 of his book Evolving Digital Leadership: How to Be a Digital Leader in Tomorrow's Disruptive World  (Brett 2019), this tool is presented as a five-step progression in which each step provides the foundation for the next:

Redrawn from Brett (2019, fig.4.1)

The tool is said to be derived from interviews, over forty,  with a selection of ‘digital leaders’. Brett selected these actions as the ‘top five most important’ from what he relays was a substantial collection of insights.

Brett gives no indication of how the digital leaders were selected, nor when the interviews were conducted nor how he determined which were the most important actions.

As presented, the ‘Career Success Pyramid’  is a visual and conceptual analogue of Maslow’s ‘hierarchy  of needs’, widely disseminated and discussed since its original publication in 1943.  (McLeod 2018):

Redrawn from McLeod  (2018)

The original proposition in Maslow’s hierarchy was that achieving each step was a pre-requisite to moving to the next.

No such constraints apply to the ’Career Success Pyramid’.  Notwithstanding his affinity for progressing through the five-layer pyramidal structure from the base up, Brett also states that

‘You can address all, or any one of these in whatever order you choose’

It could be argued further that no single one of Brett’s five actions is essential for career success: any element, reasonably, could be omitted.

Maslow and Brett do have a limitation in common:  Maslow’s work has been criticised because he originally selected and researched a small sample of people he considered to have ‘self-actualised’.  All eighteen were men (McLeod  2018). Similarly, Brett, aligning to the scope of his book,  limited his sources to his own selection of ‘digital’ leaders. But the resultant Career Success Pyramid has no exclusively digital elements within it. Brett’s pyramid falls awkwardly between being a digital leadership tool and being a general leadership tool. For the latter he has not surveyed sufficiently widely.

There is an implicit assumption, reminiscent of  the journalistic cliché of asking a centenarian to explain the secret of a long life, that ‘digital leaders’ actually know what leads to career success.

As a further distortion, it would seem inevitable that interviewees will be strongly inclined to  filter out the less salubrious behaviours leading to personal advancement that most of Brett’s readers would readily  observe in most workplaces. How many digital leaders would be prepared to state that they owe their success to combinations of luck, shameless self-publicity, plagiarism, toadyism, cronyism or bullying?

Whether or not consciously influenced by the popularity of Maslow’s hierarchy, Brett has shaped his research into a meretricious device that limits its usefulness.  Attempting to apply the tool as a literal, linear career map is likely to prove both difficult and disappointing. Brett’s five actions are all valid considerations throughout any career. A developing leader should therefore monitor them all in parallel, not in series, considering all from the start without delaying.

This change of mindset would allow the pyramid to be recast as various alternative infographics. For example, keeping to the metaphor of ancient architecture, here is  ‘The Four Pillars of Career Success’:

Adding in a few of the supplementary suggestions from Brett’s chapter, here is ‘The Career Success Tree’:

These alternative renderings show how superficially attractive visual metaphors can apply very different nuances to the same starting material. The resulting configurations are imbued with a false sense of coherence. It may be helpful to use these visual devices as a vehicle for presenting and discussing the ideas. It is less likely that the devices add value when attempting to apply them.

 By dispensing with linear progression through a pyramid, Brett’s work can be deconstructed and then reassembled to create something more useable: a series of avenues for exploration  and regular monitoring

 

Edgar Bolton. 23/02/2021

References

Brett, J. (2018) Evolving Digital Leadership: How to Be a Digital Leader in Tomorrow's Disruptive World. Apress 

McLeod, S. A. (2018, May 21). Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html