Book Club questions for the “Introduction” section of “The Expertise Economy: How the Smartest Companies Use Learning to Engage, Compete and Succeed” (Kelly Palmer & David Blake)“

I started reading this book in December 2019. These are the questions I set for myself and others in a book club that runs on Workplace by Facebook.

The questions came to my mind while reading the first section of the book.

If you want to read along with me at any speed, let me know via Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Introduction

Q1: What is your interest in this subject that has triggered you to read this book?

Q2: What in your view causes an organisation to become obsolete?

Q3: So we understand where each of us is coming from, what is your level of involvement in defining your or your clients’ organisations’ approach to learning and development strategy?

Q4: What are you doing, if anything, for your own personal development outside of anything that is happening inside your own organisation? If you are a service deliverer to organisations or to individuals, answer this question for yourself independently of those clients.

Q5: What skills do you believe you increasingly need in your own world of work and more widely?

Q6: Assess yourself and those in your organisation against the skills listed in this part of the book.

today’s vital skillset for success includes:-

1. learning agility – learn new things quickly

2. collaboration

3. teamwork

4. perseverance

5. curiosity

6. ability to question the world around you

Q7: Respond to the question “do you, and how do you, learn every day?”. Take your answer anywhere you would like to go in one stream of writing.

Q8: For whatever organisation is most relevant to you, does your organisation have captured anywhere:-

1. the skills it needs,

2. who has those skills

3. and how proficient are they,

4. what best builds those skills,

5. what are our current learning and development plans?

Q9: For yourself, answer the following:

1. what are my job or career goals?

2. what skills do I need?

3. where am I strong or weak?

4. where can I best build the skills I need?

5. how can I measure and prove my skills?

Q10: What is your view, if you have one, of where the Learning and Development function should sit in an organisation?

Q11: What do you understand by the term self-directed learning?

Q12: Would you say you are or are not a self-directed learner and why?

Q13: What are your own preferred ways of learning? Take your answer anywhere you would like to go in one stream of writing.