Training Needs Prioritization

I’m increasingly concerned that Computer Science departments are training a generation of technicians, not technologists—coders, not code-breakers. I'm seeing a growing number of highly specialized techies who excel in narrow technical fields but lack the skills for creative problem-solving, organized thinking, and articulating new ideas persuasively. Steve Jobs once said that computer science is a liberal art. Despite being taught in engineering schools, what made CS powerful, even revolutionary, was its embrace of the ‘liberal education’ ethos: broad exposure to new ideas, critical thinking, and intellectual curiosity rather than rote memorization. In my view, this commitment to ongoing learning and resisting hyper-specialization is what has driven CS’s success and resilience as a field. As software and AI continue to dominate, scaling challenges in education are inevitable. Coding camps and STEM-focused programs are springing up everywhere to meet the need, but there’s a risk that CS education is shifting toward trade-like training— prioritizing technical skills at the expense of creative and critical thinking. The business problem this creates is that tech CEOs like myself struggle to find talent capable of handling complex, 'system of systems' projects that demand a wider perspective. The societal problem is that we are raising a generation of master technicians who may lack the willingness—or the insight—to question the broader impact of what they're building. And that should concern all of us.

#Transformation in #Education Over the next decade Here’s how this transformation might unfold: 1. #Personalized #Learning: Adaptive Learning Platforms: Education will increasingly leverage AI-driven platforms that tailor lessons, assessments, and feedback to individual student needs, learning styles, and paces. This will allow for more customized learning experiences, where students can progress at their own speed. Data-Driven Insights: Schools will use data analytics to track student progress more effectively and identify areas where each student needs more support or challenge. 2. #Blended and #Hybrid #LearningModels: Flexibility in Learning Environments: The pandemic accelerated the adoption of online and hybrid learning models, and this trend is likely to continue. Students will have more options to learn in a combination of in-person and virtual settings, allowing for greater flexibility and accessibility. Global Classrooms: Technology will enable more cross-cultural and international collaboration, with students participating in global classrooms and working on projects with peers from different parts of the world. 3. Focus on #Skills Over #Content: Shift to Competency-Based Education: There will be a stronger emphasis on developing critical skills like problem-solving, creativity, collaboration, and emotional intelligence rather than merely memorizing content. This shift will prepare students better for the demands of the modern workforce. Lifelong Learning: Education systems will place more emphasis on lifelong learning, encouraging continuous skill development throughout an individual’s career, rather than focusing solely on formal education during the early years. 4. Enhanced Role of #Teachers: Facilitators and Coaches: Teachers' roles will evolve from being content deliverers to facilitators of learning, guiding students in their personalized learning journeys and helping them develop the skills needed to succeed. Professional Development: Continuous professional development for educators will become more critical, with a focus on integrating new technologies and methodologies into their teaching practices. 5. #Equity and #Inclusion: Closing the Digital Divide: Efforts to ensure all students have access to the necessary technology and resources will be a priority, reducing disparities in educational opportunities. Inclusive Curricula: There will be a push for curricula that are more inclusive of diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and cultures, promoting a more equitable and holistic education for all students. 6. Alternative #Credentialing: Micro-Credentials and Badges: Traditional degrees may be supplemented or even replaced by micro-credentials, certificates, and digital badges that recognize specific skills or competencies. Recognition of Informal Learning: More value will be placed on informal and experiential learning, with students able to gain recognition for skills acquired outside of traditional educational settings.

Understanding Formative Assessment: Empowering Learning Every Step of the Way In the ever-evolving classroom, formative assessment stands as one of the most powerful tools for both teachers and students. Unlike summative assessments that evaluate learning at the end, formative assessments are ongoing, flexible, and meant to support learning during instruction. Formative assessment isn't just a method—it's a mindset. It’s about identifying gaps, adapting instruction, and empowering students to take ownership of their learning journey. Key Categories & Types of Formative Assessment 1. Teacher-Led Checks: -Observation: Informal monitoring during activities or group work. -Questioning: Open-ended or probing questions to elicit deeper thinking. -Mini Quizzes: Low-stakes assessments to measure concept grasp quickly. -Exit Tickets: Short written responses before students leave the class. 2. Student Self-Assessment: -Traffic Lights: Students indicate understanding using red (confused), yellow (unsure), or green (confident). -Reflection Journals: Writing about what was learned and where help is needed. -Checklists & Rubrics: Students use criteria to evaluate their own performance. 3. Peer Assessment: -Think-Pair-Share: Students discuss and clarify understanding before sharing with the class. -Peer Reviews: Giving and receiving structured feedback based on learning goals. 4. Collaborative Learning Activities: -Group Projects & Discussions: Encourage dialogue, problem-solving, and real-time feedback. -Concept Mapping: Visually organizing thoughts helps assess comprehension and relationships between ideas. 5. Digital & Creative Tools: -Interactive Polls & Quizzes: Use of tools like Kahoot, Mentimeter, or Google Forms. -Padlet or Jamboard Responses: Students post responses in real-time to visualize understanding. -Whiteboard Sketches & Visual Explanations: Let students draw what they know. --- Why Formative Assessment Matters: -Promotes active learning -Supports differentiated instruction -Encourages student agency -Builds a growth mindset Whether it’s a thumbs-up, an exit ticket, or a quick group brainstorm—formative assessment allows teaching to breathe with the learners, adapting in real-time and making education truly learner-centered. --- #FormativeAssessment #AssessmentForLearning #ActiveLearning #SelfAssessment #PeerAssessment #TrafficLightStrategy #ExitTickets #DifferentiatedInstruction #StudentCenteredLearning #EdTechInEducation #TeacherTools #VisibleLearning #ReflectiveTeaching #InstructionalStrategies

The HOW & WHY in teaching: 🔹 1. The Importance of "How" in Classroom Teaching "How" refers to the methods, strategies, and approaches used to teach content and engage students. ✅ Why "How" Matters: Promotes active learning: Students learn better through strategies like cooperative learning, project-based tasks, and real-world applications. Differentiates instruction: Adapting "how" you teach allows all students—including those with diverse needs—to access the curriculum. Encourages skill-building: Teaching how to think, solve problems, and collaborate prepares students for real life, not just exams. Supports curiosity and creativity: Engaging methods like flipped classrooms or inquiry-based learning invite students to explore. Example: Instead of lecturing about the water cycle, a teacher might use an experiment or a student-created model to show how it works. 🔹 2. The Importance of "Why" in Classroom Teaching "Why" refers to the purpose, relevance, and reasoning behind learning a topic or skill. ✅ Why "Why" Matters: Increases student motivation: When students understand the purpose of a lesson, they are more likely to engage with it. Develops critical thinking: Asking "Why?" encourages analysis, reasoning, and deeper comprehension. Connects learning to real life: It helps students see the relevance of academic content to their personal goals and the world around them. Empowers learners: Understanding the “why” behind tasks builds ownership and intrinsic motivation. Example: A math teacher explains, “We’re learning percentages because you’ll need them to manage your money and understand discounts when shopping.” 🔹 How “How” and “Why” Together Improve Student Engagement Aspect How Why Impact on Engagement Lesson Delivery Uses interactive tools, visuals, group work Clarifies the reason behind the topic Students participate more actively Class Discussions Encourages students to explain their thinking Prompts reflection on purpose Deepens learning and retention Assessment Includes performance tasks and self-assessment Shows value in progress and goals Builds motivation and confidence Student Voice Allows multiple ways to express understanding Respects student interests Makes learning meaningful 🔹 Practical Tips for Teachers Start lessons by explaining “why we’re learning this.” Use “how” strategies like think-pair-share, concept mapping, or gamification. Encourage students to ask "why" questions during discussions. Make cross-curricular and real-life connections explicit. Reflect at the end of lessons with questions like: Example: “How did we learn today?” and “Why is this important?

❗ Your #1 prio for onboarding new sales reps Is not knowing all product features by heart Is not mastering all tools Is not memorizing your sales process 💡 It's understanding your customers' world Their challenges, motivations, what they get paid for, what they get fired for. ✅ Focus on ICP & IBP understanding Messaging, discovery, pitching and ultimately closing will improve automatically. Often companies have gotten it the wrong way around: they focus >80% of new rep onboarding on product, features and internal tools. The bigger the company, the more of the "training" is tool based. And little or no time on interviewing, shadowing and meeting current and past customers with the sole purpose to learn the above. Are you doing it differently? #salespeople #sales #salestraining

Students are cognitively maxed out. Herbert Simon, Nobel laureate, noted in 1977: “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” It has never been truer. Here are counterintuitive ways to encourage focus. ➜ Don't outsource foundational skills to AI The logic seems sound: let AI handle summarizing and paraphrasing to free up mental energy for analysis. But these aren't "low-level" tasks; they're essential cognitive skills. Students need to practice compression, extraction, and reformulation themselves. ➜ Design completely tech-free tasks No screens. Pen, paper, brain, silence. Then, if appropriate, compare their efforts with AI outputs or model answers. This reduces dependency, builds confidence and reveals what human thinking adds that algorithms miss. ➜ Signpost content explicitly Label it as you teach: "This is contextual information for today's discussion." "This is core knowledge you need to retain." "This is reference material you can look up later." Students waste enormous cognitive energy trying to figure out what matters. Just tell them. ➜ Assign physical books Digital reading fragments attention. Physical books create a different cognitive relationship with material — slower, deeper, with better spatial memory of where concepts appear. ➜ Teach the learning objectives, don't just post them Course syllabi on a LMS are where learning objectives go to die. Regularly recap what the whole point of the course is. Why this topic? Why now? How does today connect to the bigger picture? Orientation reduces cognitive load. ➜ Change the environment Teach outdoors or in a different campus space. Novel environments can reduce the cognitive fatigue of routine and create stronger memory encoding. Plus, movement and fresh air actually help thinking. ➜ Build in recap checkpoints Start each class with a short discussion of what was learned last time. This helps students consolidate before layering on new complexity. Accumulation without consolidation creates overload. Not everything deserves the same cognitive investment. We have to teach focus constraint. Reduce distractions, clarify priorities, build foundational capacity. Give students a chance to build the cognitive space for complexity. 💙 Congrats if you made it to the end of this post! ⬇️ If you have other suggestions, post them below.

The majority of company sales training for reps is focused on product enablement. Here’s the problem with that. Let’s say you’re a CRM company and you released a new customer service product offering for the healthcare space. You’re excited to train your SDRs and AEs on it. Lofty growth goals for the business. Your training sounds like this: “Hi team, we released our new customer service offering and we’re excited for you to share it with our customers. Today, we’ll be focusing on the capabilities that will allow all relevant patient data to be centralized in one place. This will help customers quickly resolve customer issues resulting in higher C-sat scores.” and then the training begins on the product itself. The problem with that? It’s focused on the product. Its capabilities and features. You think your prospect is waiting to hear all about it? Most aren’t. Most are putting out their own fires. Dealing with their day to day problems to achieve their goals and KPis. So why do we enable our reps on our language first? Should we not focus on our prospects language before our product capabilities and use cases? Here’s how the training could sound instead: “Hi team, we released our new customer service offering and we’re excited for you to share it with our customers. Today, we’ll be focusing on the key problems customer service / experience leaders and agents typically face in their role. The impacts on the business and metrics + KPIs most important to them. What we’ve found are 2 key problems: 1. their teams jump between a dozen different applications and spreadsheets to access patient data 2. this leads to long wait times and abandoned calls Resulting in poor patient satisfaction scores. We’ll now be diving into these points in more detail.” ………………………………. I’m not saying don’t train on the product. But what I am saying if you don’t train your reps on the problems your personas are facing and the impacts on them and their business Your reps will tend to lead with capabilities. Resulting in messaging, cold calls, discovery that will not resonate as well with your prospects. Speak your prospects language. Not yours. Problem enablement > Product enablement.

WHAT DOES RIGOROUS INSTRUCTION LOOK LIKE? 1. High Expectations for All Students • Challenging but Achievable Goals: Teachers set high standards for student performance, encouraging students to stretch beyond their comfort zones while providing the support they need to succeed. • Student Accountability: Students are expected to take responsibility for their learning. They should be able to articulate what they’re learning and why it matters. • Depth over Surface: Students are encouraged to engage with content at a deep level rather than just memorizing facts. This involves asking questions that require more than simple recall. 2. Active, Student-Centered Learning • Problem-Based Learning (PBL): Students tackle real-world problems that require critical thinking and collaboration to solve. They engage in inquiry, exploration, and research to find solutions. • Hands-On Activities: Instruction often includes interactive, hands-on learning opportunities that allow students to apply concepts in practical ways. • Discussion and Debate: Rather than just being passive recipients of information, students are encouraged to engage in thoughtful discussion, debates, and group work. This promotes the development of communication skills, critical thinking, and the ability to consider multiple perspectives. 3. Deep and Complex Content • Advanced Thinking Skills: Rigorous instruction challenges students to use higher-order thinking skills like analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing information (Bloom's Taxonomy). Students are asked to make connections between concepts, draw conclusions, and develop arguments. • Real-World Connections: The material taught is relevant and connected to real-world issues, situations, or challenges, helping students understand the practical application of what they’re learning. • Multiple Perspectives: Students are exposed to diverse viewpoints and sources of information, encouraging them to think critically and form their own well-reasoned opinions. 4. Scaffolded Support • Differentiation: While the overall expectations are high, rigorous instruction provides the necessary support to meet students at their individual levels. This could involve providing extra resources, modifying tasks, or offering different forms of guidance (e.g., visual aids, collaborative groups, etc.). • Scaffolding: Teachers provide structured support initially, then gradually remove it as students gain confidence and mastery. This helps students work independently while still feeling supported. • Formative Assessment and Feedback: Teachers use ongoing assessments to monitor progress, providing timely and specific feedback to help students improve and deepen their understanding.

The devs who survive AI won’t be the best coders. They’ll be the ones thinking like founders. Adrian Cockcroft shared this week how back in 2010, when Netflix scaled on AWS, ops teams resisted cloud adoption. So they taught developers how to operate in cloud rather than teaching operators how to develop. History is repeating with AI, but now it’s developers facing automation. The skill set needed for AI agent swarm tooling is product manager plus dev team manager. Manager skills not maker skills. Developers who lack that product mindset will fail by trying to control every line instead of defining the goal and orchestrating the agent team to deliver. The most effective developers I’ve worked with were already thinking like PMs, designers, and founders. They understood: • User problems before technical solutions • Business outcomes over elegant code • Strategic architecture versus perfect implementation • Team orchestration rather than individual heroics The high-level skills - developing strategy, crafting vision, identifying opportunities - become the differentiator. The technical skills are becoming commoditised. The strategic thinking is becoming invaluable. What skills are you developing beyond coding?