speaker-1: surface.

speaker-0: Welcome to the third episode of our Surfing Chaos audio newsletter. Unlike other newsletters, this one's built for busy brains and moving feet, because we respect your time with what needs to be short, sharp and worthwhile.

speaker-1: And if we had sponsors, there'd be a little commercial from them here, but we don't have any. So what we're gonna do instead is promote and advertise products and things that we use that we think are helpful, that help us get our stuff done, help us hack our own systems and all that. Basically everything that our book, No One Is Coming To Save You is about. So the thing I would like to promote this week is an app called Libby. I don't know if it's available outside of the United States, but Libbyapp.com is where you would go. And what I have started to do in order to maintain physical fitness is walking a lot, like 90 minutes a day, which seems like an incredible expense of time. But I am listening to books I need to get schooled up on stuff for work, like books about AI or books about whatever. And Libby is an app that will let you download them for free from your local library. So you don't have to go get a subscription to Audible. Sometimes you have to wait a little bit. I've been waiting, think, for Infinite Jest for about 27 weeks now. But I've gotten through a ton of business-related and work-related books, and I highly recommend it. I also want to say that I have a new metric for success. It's books abandoned. If you're one of those people like me that feels like once you pick up a book, you got to get it done. I don't think life is long enough for that. If I start listening to your book and it's not good, I'm going to bail.

speaker-0: so you do that to our book you've read our book

speaker-1: Our book is, well, you won't let us make an audio book, but if you did, it would be awesome. Now, would you like to offer these people some shameless self-promotions, Stu? ⁓ well, I would.

speaker-0: love to. Thank you very much, Dave. So as far as shameless self-promotions go, my next Publix CSPO class is on the 9th and 10th of March. I'm also running a certified agile facilitator class, which has got all the lovely human-centric skills that me and Dave like to talk about, all kind of embedded within that. And that's on the 1st and 2nd of April. A little reminder of my face-to-face classes that are taking place. I mentioned that I'll be in Birmingham on the 11th and 12th and I am going above the border. I'm heading to Scotland and I will be in Edinburgh on the 10th and the 11th. But I tell you what, Dave, the most exciting thing, hot off the press, in collaboration with the Scrum Alliance, I have just brought together over 20 years of proven visual thinking tools and techniques to create a unique four-hour visual thinking for collaboration micro-credential. And if you want to you know, learn a little bit from the author and the master himself. Come and join me on the 27th of April.

speaker-1: You can the master show up for that.

speaker-0: I hope so. hope he's there. Very good. Very good. You can turn up as well if you like because you know what? You could because it's going to be delivered Dave in both UK afternoon and US morning to support live participation across both regions.

speaker-1: And I will say as having taken one of your classes that it is very, helpful. And if you're somebody like me who feels like you don't have skills in that area, it's a great way to realize that you actually do.

speaker-0: Don't you me up now.

speaker-1: Now that I've been so, all right. So this is the section called looping. It's a brief explanation of stuff that we are thinking about focusing on or can't stop thinking about. And ⁓ one thing that I have been kind of stuck in since I saw the cover of this book on a page somewhere on the internet a few weeks ago is a book called AQ, a new kind of intelligence for a world that's changing. So one of the things Stu loves to talk about is how it's EQ. over IQ. And now we have AQ and I'm like, what the hell is that? Well, this woman, Liz Tran, wrote a book about your agility quotient, which obviously that's going to be like something I have to chase down. It's not agile in the sense that, you know, the kind of stuff that Stu and I teach, but agile in the sense of a human being's ability to cope with change. And so there's a lot in the book. I'm only about halfway through it. So I will have another report back. I'm still trying to figure out. where I sit with it, but I'm spending a lot of time both wanting to love the idea and wanting to hate the idea. You basically take a personality test and find out that you fit into one of four categories. You're a neurosurgeon, a novelist, a firefighter, or an astronaut, which seemed to me to be pretty lofty, but there are very well-explained personality traits or I guess change response tendencies of these people. So there's a lot of good stuff in there so far. What are you? digging into it. I'm a novelist, apparently.

speaker-0: What about me? What do think I am?

speaker-1: They don't have a word for you. But you can take the test. There's a test you can take for free if you go to our website. We'll have a link to it. ⁓ And if anybody is reading this book, I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on it. Because it could be, I mean, if it takes off, it could be huge. It could be another version of EQ that we all have to get skilled up in. But the idea of figuring out how to respond to change in a world that is changing so fast, none of us can even figure it out. There might be something to that.

speaker-0: Okay, I read it.

speaker-1: So, Liz Tran, AQ, a new kind of intelligence for a world that's always changing.

speaker-0: No, it's like two products for the price of one. That's two valuable little insights shared in one.

speaker-1: Trying to give value whatever way I can. Gotta make up the difference for you.

speaker-0: maximizing val- There we go. Well, I'll try to raise the bar right now as I throw bones and think about the future right now. ⁓ So I want to address, thanks for passing it over to me now, Dave, I'd like to address skills over roles because you know what? Your job titles describe your past much like your career, Dave, and your skills determine your future. That's right, LinkedIn reports a 25 % increase in job postings focused on skill-based hiring. That's actually growing five times faster than traditional hiring criteria, which I thought was pretty cool. There's definitely this shift. Some people like to use buzzwords like multifaceted. I like the idea of being a Swiss army knife myself, but you'll also be delighted to know. that a lot of this research is consistent and it shows that people with broader skill portfolios are more employable, more adaptable, more promotable and less vulnerable to automation. That's right. So there we go. And that was of course from the World Economic Forum. And you know that we love talking about human skills. So you'll be delighted to know that the top rising skills seem to be analytical thinking, creative thinking, resilience. Flexibility, that's basically, I've had to pick that up by working with Dave over these years. Agility, emotional intelligence is in there. Curiosity, leadership and social influence. So you'll notice human skills, not technical tools. Dave.

speaker-1: So I have a question about this. When you say skills, that's not something you're necessarily going to learn from. I there's this big push for micro learning and shorter things. That's not a skill. How will you demonstrate a skill on the resume?

speaker-0: Just sit down and you have it. Yeah, think so. I think so. And I know we haven't seen that now. I know that it's a shift that will take a while, I think. And I think we've discussed this before when we both talk about that sort of generational shift with different people's careers. And I think we still see on resumes people going for a project management role or a product ownership role. But I do think that, yeah, the skill sets that you have. ⁓ are coming ⁓ into play.

speaker-1: That's interesting too. I was on a panel this week and there was a debate about whether or not project management was a skill or not, like something you do. And to me, it's not a skill, it's a professional craft that I've been spending 30 years mastering. But I think for other people, it is maybe just a job that you do.

speaker-0: made up of multiple skills.

speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. All right, my turn to promote myself since we're not doing a good job of turning things over to one another this week. On March 12th, I'm running a CSPO course. On March 16th, an ACSPO course. It'll be St. Patrick's Day ACSPO. And on April 13th, I'm running a CSM. ⁓ So if you're interested in learning about any of those things, please look in the show notes. There's links to all of our trainings, all of our courses, all the things we're running. We're also going to be speaking at the Scrum Gathering in May, together.

speaker-0: We are, we're going to be there, we're going to be there. And I'll also be in Scan Agile if anyone's going over to Helsinki in March and I'll be bringing some books with me. I'll sign them and all that sort of jazz. I'll de-price them and make them, devalue them. But it will be fun, it'll be fun. So there'll be some talks going on there and a few things going on. And of course, we always like to end with a little plug of our book, No One Is Coming To Save You, The Power Ups To Help Serve The Chaos. You can get your hands on this on Amazon or on Leanpub. And of course, what's quite nice is to hear some nice little quotes from our book, Dave. Have you got any? ⁓

speaker-1: to have a quote right here. And remember, nobody sounds good the first few times they pick up a violin. Embrace the suck, be bad at it until you don't know how to do that anymore.

speaker-0: I love it. It's almost like trying to run an audio newsletter.

speaker-1: a little bit.

speaker-0: There we go. Well thank you very much everybody. Please do give us likes and thumbs and all the other jazz. We shall see you next time.

speaker-1: Thanks for listening.

speaker-0: you

speaker-1: you Serve the chaos.