My year of Learning and Development in a Cloud & Digital Transformation Consulting

Let’s talk about The Personal Development.

I’ve been meaning to write this up for a while, and finally have time to sit down with my thoughts during the holiday season to pen this down. This is my personal #LearningEveryDay programme, presented as a "Year in Review". I hope the below, non-technical learning guide will serve as a good Personal Development reference in your own personal #ContinuousLearning journey, since the subject covered are quite timeless.

My L&D Journey

A year or so prior, I start to realize something.

Throughout my engineering career, I have embarked upon a lot of technical SME courses. Be it AWS or Google Cloud certification deep dives, all of which I found invaluable. Or be it the trifecta of Kubernetes Certifications, a knowledge that I heavily relied upon every professional working day in 2021. They are all incredibly technical SME category, but localized & tactical.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty learning more, I like to formulate a Summary Vision Thesis for particular Trend, that may likely span years. And then break that down into a mission objectives for a given year or so ahead.

It is most certainly a low degree of confidence to know what is some 3-years out from a consulting point of view. And whatever that change ahead, it is always about learning and adapting to such change. Change is inevitable.

Thus, Think like The Change, Become the Change ??

What I felt I needed was to start clean with the non-technical consulting best-practices.

It was time for the Big Picture! For example, I wanted to define and learn what great leadership really is, and help answer my own set of questions, ?? like;

• What makes-up some of the most successful organisations and projects? What can I learn to influence successful outcomes?
• How much does The Culture impact The Company? What does that look like? What can I do to positively influence such culture?
• What factors and technology & industry trends that are and will be disrupting tomorrow, (3-5 years out) and where can I add strategic value?

My Plan was to embark upon some formal training courses and then learn more about such Big Picture 10,000ft view, and clarify the 'What Good Looks Like' in terms of Leadership, Management and Strategy.

Then supplement those core courses, with a casual read and listen to the great number of books that underpin The Industry. Again, the main emphasis in the supplemented reading was on The People and The Processes, as much as The Trend. This is all on top of the Technical SME learnings.

It was almost guaranteed to be a #burnout ???? if I did not manage this effort carefully, with some calendar time management efforts. Fortunately, as follow Contino employees would attest, the dedicated 10 days of study leave has proven to be priceless. That is on top of that ￡5,000 annual training budget for each Contini. One cannot buy back time after all.

The Learning Material

So here comes my Mix-Tape of Learning and Development. The books to start with, Leadership and Culture subject: ??

• Leaders eat Last, Find Your Why,?and The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. A starting point - Must Read. This is about our culture. IMHO, this relates to our organisation and why I choose to work where I work (9h). This is beyond what it just means to work, but helps define the purpose of such work and thus gives our organisation, our teams and individuals meaningful challenges.
• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries on How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses. This is all about efficient & effective process formulation and leadership positioning to ensure you’re not just working hard to do things right, but you're doing the Right Things, that actually delivers the correctly-measured desired business outcome.
• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willick and Leif Babin. This is a must on leadership, #continuousLearning and ownership. “There is No growth in comfort” (8h)
• Leading Change by John Kotter - Enterprise Transformation Bible 101 (6h)
• The Trusted Advisor by David Maister. This is on how to be a Good Consultant 101, especially if you're new to consulting?with an emphasis on relationships over transactions (9h)
• Leadership Unchained by Sarah Canaday. This was a great find and follow-up on her amazing LinkedIn Learning series on Leadership (3h)

Part of the #LearningEveryDay efforts, there were learnings to be had on a more macro-view outlook on the world and the industries, impacted by the ever-evolving and even accelerating pace of technology.

• The Price of tomorrow by Jeff Booth. Great book to help make sense visualise the world of tomorrow with the exponential nature of technology (5h)
• Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows. In this topic, the book recognises that our world perception may be linear but the way systems, and incentives operate may skew our expectations resulting in associated success or failure of planning.
• Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean by Kim Scott. This is as it says in the title. Asking, and offering radical straight forward no-fluff feedback. Can you handle it, that is my question (9h)
• The Visual MBA by Jason Barron. This was a great complimentary learning material for the LSE MBA Essentials course. “The Visual MBA: A Quick Guide to Everything You’ll Learn in Two Years of Business School”
• The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman. Again, this is complimentary reading, and learning for LSE MBA. This was a fantastic book just as it says on the tin. “The Personal MBA: A World-Class Business Education in a Single Volume”

My Formal Training ?? with online courses from Oxford Said and LSE, was very well received, and much needed a “forget assumptions, this is what good should be like” theme on tech, business, and then some.

• Oxford Fintech Programme - Big Picture view on industry trends and impact taking place today, and in the near future.
• London School and Economics MBA Essentials - This helped formalise known concepts, reinforced with financial toolkits, along with topics on Human element, Strategy development & execution.

I have omitted the technical training and certifications since those would be specific to the subject area interest of every consultant and engineer. It’s been a great challenge of a year and looking positively ahead, it has been worthwhile every single day.

For the year ahead, This is partially TBC and partially covered in my separate post here, where I shared my views on 2021 and 2022 as a Google Cloud Practice lead.

I hope you found this post insightful and helpful. If you’re already working through this learning material (You Legend, you!) and looking for a new challenge, then we'd love to hear from you! Do reach out ?? to me or the talent team here on LinkedIn.

Have a Great Festive Family Holiday Season and a Successful New Year. ??????

-Jaroslav