Always be learning.

I recently took a 12-week marketing course, online. Those who know me well might wonder why. I’m not planning to become a marketer. That would be a strange move for me. 

Success comes from a team where people from different expertise can listen and understand each other.

Let me give an example. When a CEO tries to explain business problems and objectives to their team, they will speak in the common “language of business” - strategy, value proposition, revenue, cost-benefit, etc. 

But a developer “speaks” in computing terms. For them to create algorithms that do meaningful things to drive a business forward, you have to translate the business objectives into a set of features that can be implemented. 

Getting back to that marketing course... Many of the strategic business problems I have been working on with my customers require collaboration with marketing people.

To work better together, I needed more to better understand their language. Already, this course is paying dividends. 

When I’m working with a marketer, I can quickly see how what they are doing fits into the overall picture. I can far more appreciate what they are after when they talk about market orientation, the outcome of market research, the importance of segmentation and targeting, positioning, and much more. Then I can see better how that will align with the overall company strategy. It makes my life much easier as I go on to build the technology to make the whole thing successful.

There’s another benefit to challenging yourself with learning something new and distant from your core skill set. You’re not just learning new information. You are learning new ways of thinking and approaching problems. That is a lesson I would like to promote.