IT and Analytical Skills Audit

In the previous posts I described the Dreyfus model of skill levels and explained why experts are not to be found in service industries. I've worked in service industries all my life and it makes me wonder how smart I really am or how much I didn't bother learning because I didn't need to.

So here's my view of myself. I am a proficient problem-solver and decision-maker. Part of that proficiency is learning to use the tools at hand to solve the problem, to produce something that does whatever needs to be done. At work I use Excel and VBA to produce reports off Teradata and Oracle databases not because I think those are the best tools, but because until recently The Bank didn't have anything else. (That's right, one of the largest retail financial companies in human history didn't have SAS or Business Objects as standard analyst's kit. You couldn't make it up.) Those solutions do the job and the job is what I was hired to do. Now that we have SAS and Business Objects, I'll look into using those. I extend my knowledge of what those tools can do and I've tightened up my programming style since reading Code Complete a couple of years ago. Another part of that proficiency is having enough background knowledge of a lot of subjects so that I can pick up and understand what I need, covering subjects from statistical significance tests to buyer psychology.

Am I a proficient VBA programmer and Excel user? Here's where I have a problem. Probably I am, but because I've always worked in service industries where the technical requirements are very low, I've never really been pushed to learn all that I can learn. And I don't learn that stuff for the enjoyment of it - I'm a philosopher and mathematician, not a programmer who goes home and works on open-source. So maybe while I have proficient technique, my knowledge level is only competent.

If I'm a proficient problem-solver and decision-maker, how come I'm, not in management? Because except right at the top, management is not where decisions are made nor problems solved. Most management jobs are mostly administration, reporting, supervision, some light project- and process-management and people-development. A handful offer opportunities for leadership-by-example and even fewer for leadership-by-inspiration. The Bank flatters call centre team group supervisors by sending them on "leadership" courses, but that's just linguistic inflation. You want to make decisions? Seek out the trading floor my son. You want to solve problems? Go into programming, engineering or medicine.

I'm a proficient pricing analyst / manager as well. In a lot of companies, pricing is where a lot of decisions are. Just not in The Bank. The pricing I do is neither insurance nor financial instruments, but that's enough. I don't want to price CDO's thank you. You can't be good at pricing without being competent at management accounting and such related matters.

So at what do I suck?