Frequently Asked Questions

Skills 2.0 is the next level of skills you and your organization need for the new world of business.

It is specifically geared to prepare your organization for the accelerating pace of change and the roller-coaster nature of the new economy.

This environment demands a new level of alertness and readiness at all levels of the organization — which traditional skills do not provide.

Every mistake in business is the result of pursuing answers rather than asking the right questions.

And lately, a lot of individuals and a lot of organizations have been struggling through a lot of mistakes.

If you and your organization fail to master the art of asking the right questions, the struggles and mistakes will continue.

Traditional skills emphasize answers. Answers are typically in the form of rules, laws, scripts, processes, techniques, procedures, formulas and methods.

But the emphasis on answers is the reason most businesses are in trouble today.

When employees are spoonfed answers, they become mentally lazy, unmotivated, disengaged, mediocre team players, mediocre at execution, and hard-pressed to create game-changers.

This is the exact opposite of what you need for success in business today.

There will always be legal and technical reasons for policies and checklists.

But most businesses today rely far too heavily on rules, policies and scripts.

When you shift your emphasis to training employees to ask questions, you'll realize that most of the answers you imposed on your employees before were actually stifling your organization's performance.

If your leadership strategy is still answer-driven, "somewhere you haven't done your job."

Actually, there is a slow but growing consensus among the universities and think tanks that "the education that we've had for the last 20 or 30 years has pretty much run its course." And: we've now entered "a period of enormous innovation in education." Those are the words of Garth Saloner, dean of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

Warren G. Bennis, Professor at USC's School of Business concurs: "Schools are on the wrong track," he says.

And the MBA Program at Chicago Booth, ranked Number One by The Economist, emphasizes that "you're only as good as the questions you ask."

Change will be slow in coming, however. Those who teach us about change are painfully slow themselves in abandoning their centuries-old traditions of teaching answers.

Yes and no.

If by going back to the basics you mean spoonfeeding even more answers to your employees, or if you mean spoonfeeding them with different or "improved" answers, then no, we shouldn't be going back to those basics because they never really worked. Those basics are the reason most businesses are in trouble today.

If, on the other hand, by basics you mean returning to the way a few companies (such as Apple and Southwest) have been run, then, yes indeed, we should go back to those basics.

But those basics represent a radical reinvention for most organizations because they were never run that way.

You can no longer differentiate yourself in the marketplace on the technical skills in your organization. These skills — such as how to operate specific machinery, how to manage quality, HR policies — are very commonplace today.

But the soft skill sets — like leadership, innovation, execution — are still in very scarce supply.

In even shorter supply are the higher level skills such as acuity, perspective, insight, foresight and judgment.

These higher level skills come as a result of learning to ask the right questions.

And that's what Skills 2.0 is about — infusing your organization culture with people adept at asking the right questions who, as a result, become great at leadership, innovation, execution, teamwork and more.

Most organizations today have it backwards. They tinker with the operational details. Developing the higher level skills is the farthest thing from their mind. It should be first and foremost. It should reign over everything you do. And now is the time to make that shift.

There's a risk in everything. But ask yourself which is the bigger risk —

If you stick with the traditional way of doing business, you're taking the huge risk that, at a very crucial moment, your employees won't remember the mountain of scripts and processes you've been spoonfeeding them. You're also taking the huge risk that your employees are so inundated, they completely miss the opportunities to improve your organization — and the hidden threats to your organization.

When you shift up to Skills 2.0 and liberate your employees to ask the right questions, they're likely to become far more alert, far more perceptive, far quicker at spotting opportunities, and far more adept at nipping problems in the bud.

Skills 2.0 is about becoming alert, agile and perceptive with all events, all tasks, all people — including customers, employees, coworkers and bosses.

The direct result of you becoming alert, agile and perceptive is you become great with leadership, teamwork, innovation, negotiating, selling, time management, customer service, marketing, business strategy, missions, vision statements, continuous improvement, motivation, discipline, empowerment, employee retainment, employee engagement and other such related skills.

Skills 2.0 dramatically reduces the time and money you need in three ways:

• Learn Less, Understand More: Traditional learning, with its reliance on rules, laws and methods requires memorization — which, in turn, requires repetitions, refreshers and reminders. In contrast, the focus of Skills 2.0 is on understanding and perspective — which dramatically reduces the need for repetitions, refreshers and reminders. Think of it this way: There are millions of methods to memorize but only a handful of perspectives to understand.

• Accelerate Your Learning: With traditional learning, you can typically learn just one skill at a time. In contrast, with Skills 2.0, you build on what you've learned in all the other skills you've already acquired, thus dramatically accelerating your learning.

• Fewer Initiatives, More Accomplishments: Many of the initiatives you need with traditional learning simply become unnecessary when you shift up to Skills 2.0. That's because, with Skills 2.0, you accomplish those initiatives as a natural outcome of learning at the Skills 2.0 level. The end result is you need fewer initiatives while progressing across a broad range of accomplishments.

No. It is important to recognize that Skills2.0 doesn't replace any of the cutting-edge and ingenious books, courses or blogs available today — and there are many available.

Skills 2.0 simply reverses the order in which you learn — and, as a result, dramatically reduces the time and money you need to spend on acquiring knowledge.

Traditionally, most people have focussed primarily on acquiring knowledge. And if/when they've gained perspective, it has been through age or experience — and too often, after a major setback or catastrophe.

With Skills 2.0, your primary focus is establishing a foundation of acuity and perspective.

You'll find that, with such a foundation:

• you don't need to acquire as much knowledge as before

• you become adept even in situations where no knowledge is available (which is now very common in the new world of business)

• you'll be ahead of everybody else in understanding what you need to understand — rather than waiting, as most others do, until a specific important concept enters the "accepted body of knowledge."

Think of Skills 2.0 as a powerful new learning platform. Its purpose is to open a new gateway to enormous new possibilities for learning and enormous new possibilities for business and to change the trajectory of global business.

Skills 2.0 is not limited to any particular process of learning. It is not just about e-learning, or just about books, or just about workshops, or just about conferences, or just about blogs.

Skills 2.0 is about all of the above. It is about learning at the highest level possible. Period.

There are many people who are, indeed, alert and perceptive. But it is important to remember that the vast majority are not. They just believe they are.

This has been proven through numerous studies and surveys — some scientific, some not. For example:

• Leadership: 90% of all leaders believe they are among the top 10% of all leaders.

• Parenting: 90% of all mothers believe they are among the top 10% of all mothers.

• Financial planning: 90% of all people believe they are among the top 10% when it comes to planning their finances.

Self-delusion is clearly a very common human trait. Keep this in mind before you decide how to move forward.

• Ordinariness: When you're learning/doing what everyone else also is learning/doing, then by definition, you are ordinary.

• Obsolescence: When your focus is on acquiring knowledge, then you're learning what worked (maybe) in the past. By definition, it is already obsolete.

• Inefficiency: When you're learning things you don't need to learn, you're just wasting your precious resources and falling farther behind.

It has been said that ninety percent of all the training in the world of business is wasted. A good amount of this waste comes from the timing of the training:

1. either the trainee is not ready to be trained the specific skill

2. or, the organization is not ready for the trainee to practice his/her training

With the Skills 2.0 platform, this "problem" becomes a non-issue. This is because:

• Skills 2.0 is not about learning a particular skill. It is about learning how to learn and be alert and perceptive with all skills.

• Skills 2.0 is about all organizational situations. This means the trainee can start practicing his/her training right away.

With the new world of business, the need for shifting up to Skills 2.0 is immediate.