25: Mr. Pugh
My dad is a lovely man. He’s polite, courteous, thoughtful… wouldn’t say boo to a goose.
He’s also a wonderful father - he worked tirelessly to raise me and my brother in a safe and loving environment.
And so, as I reached my seventeenth year of being, he did the honourable thing and volunteered to teach me to drive.
It was an experiment that lasted less than a week.
There was shouting, swear words, accusations, tears. At one point, he even started promoting the health benefits of cycling.
Now, before you pass judgement, I should probably provide some more context - my dad is a great driver. He worked for the government and his job regularly required him to undergo advanced driver training, so he could safely pursue vehicles during high pressure situations.
As a young child, I distinctly remember interrogating him about all the different techniques he had mastered - including ‘double declutching’, accelerating through corners, and leaving what seemed like an unnecessary large distance behind the car in front so there was time to manoeuvre in an emergency.
But my dad’s ability to drive did not translate into being a great teacher.
And you’re a learning professional, so you don’t need me to tell you this… but being skillful doesn’t mean you’re an expert at teaching that skill.
So, where am I going with this?
Well, in the last email I made the following claim:
"The skills we're discussing will be valuable forever. Because someone will always need to understand the work before technology can support it. Complex work involves hundreds of hidden decisions, trade-offs and dependencies that most organisations don’t even realise exist. In fact, usually the person doing the work doesn’t realise they exist!
And so, my little story about driving versus teaching was designed to illustrate two points:
Being an expert at something doesn’t mean that person can explain how they’re doing it.
Most people overestimate their ability to explain how they do something.
If we apply that logic in an organisational context, two things become clear:
Businesses underestimate the complexity involved in defining work.
Anyone with the ability to define work has an increasingly valuable skill.
I.e., those who master this skill will be in increasingly hot demand!
Because to use AI effectively, people need to provide clear instructions about what they want it to do, enough context to understand the task, and guardrails to avoid drift.
Remember: humans can compensate for ambiguity, but AI cannot.
And so, one’s ability to use AI - and more importantly, one's ability to scale solutions beyond their own use so others can benefit - is entirely dependent on their ability to quantify what they’re doing.
All that tacit knowledge needs to be unpacked, documented, and designed around.
And so, these are the skills that will ensure you and I stay relevant, regardless of what’s happening with the tech.
Yours,
- Ant
PS. You’ll be glad to hear that whilst Mrs Pugh is a less accomplished driver, she successfully taught me and my little brother to drive. And my dad has never let anyone go near his car since.
