Learning by Numbers

How to become an expert at anything in 5 easy steps.

How to prepare a team to become experts in their area of ownership.

👩‍🏫 You can be an expert!

When joining a team; it is rarely made explicit what skills and knowledge your co-workers have. People do brief introductions about their time at a company, their previous experience, and their current focus. These introductions set the scene for who your colleagues might be, but very rarely do you find out what people actually know.

In addition to the briefest of introductions, it is hard to guage how experienced people are across a range of tasks. An engineer who's been working for 20 years might not know about basic Linux networking commands such as dig because they've been working on Windows operating systems. Or perhaps a programmer has no understanding of how the .NET interpreter works in comparison to a JVM because they've been working in C++, Rust, and Go.

The 5 stage learning model presented in this topic provides a transparent framework for scoring knowledge consistently across a team, allowing a team lead to quickly identify skill gaps, and create a practical training plan to follow.

Learning by Numbers Model

The model used here has five stages:

1. 🧩 Awareness
2. 🔬 Research
3. 🏃 Usage
4. 🏋️ Practiced
5. 👩‍🏫 Teaching

The model is designed to be easy to grade using a series of yes/no questions, whilst implying exponential knowledge and experience to advance upwards along the scale.

By producing a simple number multiple skills can be quickly graded and stored in a spreadsheet and sorted to form a training plan.

🎓 Skill	1	2	3	4	5
Learning by Numbers	🧩	⬛	⬛	⬛	⬛

How experienced are you?

With the model in mind; the basic question becomes: "How experienced are you with X?" where "X" is the skill being graded.

Some examples:

• 🍳 How experienced are you with cooking?
• 🍞 How experienced are you with baking bread?
• 🏊 How experiecned are you with swimming?
• 💾 How experienced are you with C++?
• 🎨 How experienced are you with painting?
• 🖼️ How experienced are you with oil painting on silk canvas?

Not all skills are equal; general skills such as walking, or typing tend to be common and easy to learn, but the results and quality will differ wildly. You might be able to teach someone to cook a passable meal using, burgers, mash, peas, and gravy, but you may have never attempted to bake bread - even though baking bread requires many basic cooking skills.

I have taught a child to paint using brushes and water colours, but I've never used oil paints on a silk canvas.

🧩 Awareness

Awareness means you at least have a word or concept with which to link any further knowledge to.

At this first level of the model, the basic yes-no question to ask is; "Have you heard of the thing?".

Perhaps you have asked someone about the thing, looked it up in a dictionary, or encyclopedia, or more likely today; you found a definition online. Once you have a word to associate with - you can go find out what the thing is!

We're all born without knowledge; it's ok to be unaware of things. The great news is upon hearing a new word - you get to learn about a new thing!

Not being aware of a concept is something of a Pandora's Box - technically on this model, you score 0 if you're unaware of a thing, but as soon as you can map out the word in your mind, you have then become aware of the concept, even if you've done no further research on the topic, which is enough to score you a 1 on the Learning by Numbers scale for this skill.

As for Learning by Numbers - congrats, you're learning already!

🔬 Research

Research means you have spent time and effort to learn about the concept in question.

At the second level of the model, the basic yes-no question to ask is; "Have you researched the thing?".

Perhaps you've read a book on the topic, or watched a youtube video? Maybe you've read a scientific paper, listened to a podcast, read an indepth news article, cribbed notes from a textbook, found a README file in GitHub, or been fortunate enough to have a teacher explain the concept.

If you have researched the thing, then you know what the thing is, so you should have some experience of the theory behind the thing; you would score at least 2 on the Learning by Numbers scale for this skill.

🎓 Skill	1	2	3	4	5
Learning by Numbers	🧩	🔬	⬛	⬛	⬛

🏃 Usage

Usage means you've at least taken your theoretical understanding of a thing, and acted it out in the world.

At this third level of the model, the basic yes-no question to ask is; "Have you used the thing?".

Perhaps you've atended a cooking class, or a wood working workshop. Maybe you've rendered a 3D scene from your home computer, or compiled a computer program. Maybe you've made a spreadsheet, played an instrument, walked up a hill. The important thing is that you've got hands on personal experience with the thing, changing it from a purely theoretical concept to something that you have practical experience with.

If you have used the thing, you have practical experience and memories of how to achieve that thing again the future. You probably feel pretty confident about the thing! You would score at least 3 on the Learning by Numbers scale for this skill.

🎓 Skill	1	2	3	4	5
Learning by Numbers	🧩	🔬	🏃	⬛	⬛

🏋️ Practiced

Practiced means you have achieved a level of skill beyond basic usage.

At this fourth level of the model, the basic yes-no question to ask is; "Have you extensively used the thing?".

Perhaps you have toiled away at a thing, practicing, failing, perfecting your skill. Maybe you've experimented with flavour, colour, tone, going so far as to write your own memoirs on the topic.

If you have used the thing extensively, then you should be able to trust yourself and your second nature to do those things again without second thought. You would score at least 4 on the Learning by Numbers scale for this skill.

🎓 Skill	1	2	3	4	5
Learning by Numbers	🧩	🔬	🏃	🏋️	⬛

👩‍🏫 Teaching

Teaching means you've passed on your knowledge of the skill to someone else.

At this fith level of the model, the basic yes-no question to ask is; "Have you taught the thing to someone else?".

Perhaps you're a mentor at work, or school, or in a community group. Maybe you're a team leader. Maybe you've built a YouTube channel, published a Udemy course, or shared your knowledge with the world via a podcast.

If you have taught the thing to someone else, and answered yes to all the other questions, then you are probably as good as an expert. On the Learning by Numbers scale you would score 5 for this skill. That's not to say you know everything about the topic, or have more to learn - there are people who spend years, if not decades perfecting their craft. Potentially there's a scale for 6's, 7's, and 8's - such people might have PhDs, be business owners, or are recognised nationally and internationally.

🎓 Skill	1	2	3	4	5
Learning by Numbers	🧩	🔬	🏃	🏋️	👩‍🏫

📗 Application in a team

The Learning by Numbers scale has two main purposes:

1. 🔎 Identifying skill shortages in a team
2. 📅 Building individual training plans

By identifying key skills, and grading team knowledge, you can actively work with co-workers to enhance everyone's understanding of the team's shared domain.

Even just the first step of taking time to write out a list of skills will help everyone understand where their strengths and weaknesses lie.

The second step targets individuals; giving them strength and guidance to work towards meaningful training goals - and through helping their team, the individual and the team becomes more resilient by being more confident in their core capabilities.

🔎 Identifying skill shortages

Step 1: Build a skills survey around technologies and skills of the team

Grade:	🧩 Aware	🔬 Researched	🏃 Used	🏋️ Practiced	👩‍🏫 Teaching
Score:	1	2	3	4	5

Step 2: Send out the survey as a self-assessment for everyone to complete

🎓 Skill	✏️ My Score
SSL Certificates	4 🏋️
Linux CLI	4 🏋️
Java 8	2 🔬
Spark server	2 🔬
Maven	3 🏃
Jenkins CI	2 🔬
MySQL	3 🏃

To identify potential skill shortages; you can start by listing out all the key domains of knowledge required to work on a system. For example, in a medium sized software application you might identify that the team needs 8 different skills to do their jobs effectively.

With this list to hand, you can then build a survey, or a spreadsheet asking team members to grade their knowledge of each area from 1 to 5, for example:

📅 Building a training plan

Step 3: Add up the scores for each skill based on the team's responses; and then order the table by descending totals.

🎓 Skill	👨‍🚀 John	👩‍🔧 Hannah	🐈 Ezio	🐾 Icarus	🧮 Total
Spark server	2	2	1	0	5
SSL Certificates	4	3	0	0	7
Linux CLI	4	3	0	1	8
Java 8	2	4	0	2	8
MySQL	1	2	1	5	9
Maven	3	3	3	2	11
Jenkins CI	3	3	2	3	11

Step 4: Organise training with the top item, and rescore after each training session - repeat until happy! 🎓

This score chart is now a shared tool that you can revisit.

class: conclusion

🧵 Conclusion

Using the Learning by Numbers model, we can quickly grade and share our knowledge and experience of multiple skills.

Grade:	🧩 Aware	🔬 Researched	🏃 Used	🏋️ Practiced	👩‍🏫 Teaching
Score:	1	2	3	4	5

Working with a team, we can share our combined knowledge of a field, and use that to build individual and communal training plans.

Making a plan is easy; and for simple skills you might only need a few days to become an expert. For bigger more complex topics, it may take days, weeks, or even years across a variety of skills to become comfortable.

Practical exercise:

• 📝 List out 10-12 key skills required to do your job
• ✏️ Grade yourself via self-assessment using Learning by Numbers
• 🍊 Concentrate your training on your weakest skills
• 🏆 Challenge yourself to advance each skill to the next level

🗺️ Where next?

You probably want to go back to the 📚 Topic Index !