I was reading with great interest Steve Pavlina’s article on skill. The author, widely known for his personal development blog, wrote about the skills he has developed through the years in order to become a competent blogger on his chosen field. Some of these core skills include a deep personal development knowledge, communication and technical skills for setting up his blog.

Then a similar question came to me: what are the core skills of an OR practitioner? I already researched and mentioned a few of these in my previous article on my graduate study experience. I’d like to list down some of these skills which must be continuously honed in order to become an OR pro:

  1. Core OR knowledge
    this includes the different OR methods and techniques, e.g. linear and integer programming, simulation, statistics; equally important are modeling and problem solving skills.
  2. Other technical skills
    these include skills which are transferable to fields outside OR, e.g. programming, database, web technology
  3. Communication skills, both written and oral
  4. Project management skills for successfully conducting an OR project from start to finish

Skill #1 and #2 are the targets of my graduate study while project management, I believe, needs to be learned through actual work experience.

On developing communication skills

That leaves me with the need to build good written and oral communication skills. Relating to OR practice, the first one would be needed, for example, in project proposals and documentations while the latter would be needed in client discussions and OR solution presentations. Clearly, these skills need to be continually developed.

With this blog, I’ve found the perfect vehicle to hone my written communication skills. In order to generate value, I need to learn how to write well and clearly explain my thoughts, even if in basic, non-technical format. Due to my previous work experience, I learned to subscribe to the adage “If you can’t explain it in simple terms, you probably don’t really understand it very well.” Although I intend to blog sometimes using technical terms (i.e. I’m actually excited to learn how to write equations and OR formulations using Latex for WordPress), I also want to write non-technical articles which are hopefully informative to a broader range of readers.

Oral communication skill is equally, if not more, important. Due to the nature of my work, I’m not able to hone this as well as the other skills. Still, there is hope, and all I need is the courage and commitment to work on this particular skill. I already found one such organization which helps to accomplish this goal: Toastmasters International. A few years ago, I actually attended one meeting of a Toastmasters club near our place, and although I was welcomed warmly, I never returned again! I was intimidated, these are people who are very competent in the way they speak and project themselves. There’s no way I can be at ease with that group.

That was my sentiment during that time. But I’ve realized right now that if I want to become competent in my field, I need to learn the art of speaking. Hopefully, I can summon the courage to join such club within the next two years.

Continuous improvement

I’ve mentioned 4 groups of skills which need to be honed by the aspiring OR practitioner. These are just some of the important skills, there are also soft skills to be developed such as interpersonal, networking and the ability to work in a team. Clearly, it takes significant investments of time to become a pro. But as Steve Pavlina said in his article, if you really are dedicated to your chosen field, then you’ll strive to do whatever it takes to get better. As for me, I hope I would slowly mature from being a novice to an OR professional someday.