The last post I put together a table but wasn’t completely satisfied with it. Here’s version two, with a couple minor changes:

Beginner	Intermediate	Advanced
Self Development	Employee Development	Cultural Cultivation (Team development)
Communication	Empathetic Understanding	Conflict Resolution
Continuous Improvement	Root Cause Analysis	Alignment
Personal Productivity	Project Management	Strategy

As I looked at this table, I asked myself “What is each row for?” I came up with this:

• Growing
• Getting along with other people
• Improving old stuff
• Doing new stuff

That made it clear to me that Strategy should go with “Doing new stuff,” not “Improving old stuff” as the final piece. That left a gap in “Improving old stuff” and I added back in a skill I had removed from previous versions — Root cause analysis.

My thinking in removing it was that we should already be teaching that in continuous improvement. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that was too much for one subject. Continuous improvement is, in my mind, kaizen, and it centers around learning the PDCA cycle.

PDCA is a lot to cover, so adding something else there didn’t make sense which means we should break out the other key piece — root cause analysis — into its own subject.

Alignment is still somewhat of an awkward fit, but it is involved with creating a target condition, so I think it’ll work.

I feel pretty good about this table and these subjects. They would then be taught in this order:

1. For everyone
   • Self Development
   • Communication
   • Continuous Improvement
   • Personal Productivity
2. For potential leaders
   • Empathetic Understanding
   • Root Cause analysis
   • Project Management
   • Employee Development
3. For first time leaders
   • Conflict Resolution
   • Cultural Cultivation
   • Alignment
   • Strategy

I feel like that is a progression that makes sense. You could tweak a couple things (Conflict resolution could go earlier in the program, for example), but overall I’m pretty pleased.

If your employee offered a employee and leadership training course, and the list above was the syllabus, how would you react?