How should I approach learning in my career?
A free education resource for all OpsScale subscribers
Imagine that each stop on your career is like taking a vacation to a new part of the world where you haven’t been before. Starting a new job is like heading to a new place - you’ve got your plane ticket and you’re on your way.
You have a basic idea of some things that you’d like to do, but you don’t have a specific, set itinerary.
Of course, you want to make the most of your vacation time. You’re not sure exactly how long it will last or what types of experiences you’ll have along the way, but you are hoping to make it a great experience and to be more prepared for what comes next after you’re done.
Now imagine that you had a basic map of the area you’re going to visit. Something not overly detailed, but it gives you the lay of the land. With that map, you’re not going to get lost, and you’ll probably hit the big “must-see” locations that everyone who visits that location raves about.
If you only visit the locations called out on the map, you’ll probably be able to find what you’re looking for without too much trouble, and you’ll enjoy the time you spend on your vacation.
As you’re getting off the plane at your destination, you bump into a couple of locals returning home from their travels. After some small talk, they offer some recommendations of places that are off the beaten path that you should check out. These aren’t places most tourists are likely to stumble into on their own, but they’ll give you a more true experience of what it’s like to be in your destination.
As you make your way through the activities you have planned on your trip, you find that you’re having a really great time. One afternoon, you get a bit lost on your way to a planned stop, you end up a bit turned around and discover an amazing little beach that is almost entirely deserted. After spending some time there soaking up the sun, you head on your way. A few days later you decide to take a chance on a restaurant a couple of blocks away from your hotel. Unfortunately, it doesn’t live up to the “world’s best” billing on the sign in the front window.
Over the next few weeks you have more of these experiences on your own, and you combine them with things you’ve found on the map, as well as some places the locals recommend along the way.
Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Hopefully, we’re all headed on a vacation soon.
But let’s get to the real question…
What in the world does this have to do with my career?
This example illustrates how I look at professional learning.
The map of your vacation destination is a basic understanding of product functionality - essentially, knowing what to click and when to click it
The recommendations from locals are like the things you read about on Linkedin, the ideas you get from webinars you attend, or the things you try because you saw them in a newsletter
The places you find on your own are like the things you learn through your own experience - the application of what you know and think added to what you’ve learned from others and can see on the map
In my experience, it’s been difficult to find the map when it comes to Operations roles. There are vendor-offered courses, which vary in helpfulness from pretty helpful to not all, and sometimes just turn into a giant sales pitch for features you don’t have access to or professional services support that you can’t afford.
There are quite a few diamonds in the rough - courses offered by experts in their craft who share lessons learned from their years of experience. Unfortunately, all too often these courses are tucked away on a personal website or a community learning site and you don’t hear about them unless you follow every Ops expert on LinkedIn or spend endless hours Googling.
Well, after endless hours Googling, I’m excited to share a more comprehensive and easy-to-navigate version of the map - the OpsScale Course Database:
What is this?
The OpsScale Course Database is a collection of 50+ courses related to all sorts of Operations topics. There are courses related to specific tools, like:
Marketo
HubSpot
Marketing Cloud
As well as topic-specific courses for basic and advanced Marketing and Revenue Operations outcomes.
The database is sortable, and filterable, and has a variety of information about the courses, including the type of course (self-paced, vs. instructor-led), the language(s) the course is offered in, the relative cost, and even, in some cases, the learning tool or platform the course is offered in - especially useful if you already use something like LinkedIn Learning or Udemy.
Some thoughts on courses
In some circles of the Ops world, the value of courses is sometimes up for debate.
Especially when it comes to product-focused courses - they aren’t the end-all, be-all. Just because someone is certified in Marketo, HubSpot or Salesforce doesn’t mean that they will be successful in the application of that knowledge in a real professional setting.
It does, however, mean that they have a basic orientation of the tool and an understanding of how to use it. It’s a foot in the door - it’s an essential step towards building a foundation of experience and knowledge that can be relied on in countless scenarios moving forward.
Like the vacation example, without that overall frame of reference, recommendations from locals and your own exploration are much less defined and unlikely to result in a positive outcome with any sort of consistency.
There are also courses offered that might be more like recommendations from locals. These offerings provide more strategic insights, and examples of how to actually apply the capabilities of a tool to a variety of situations, and even how to come up with your own applications of tools/data to business scenarios.
Ultimately, the amount of value you get out of courses like these lies in what you do with the knowledge.
If you’ve got a favorite course that you’d like to see in the database, or you’re a creator and would like to have your course added, let me know! The list will be updated regularly - I’ve got plans for adding new types of courses and some other data points as well!
Now, have you picked your next vacation destination…? 🙂