Your best reps are often "unconsciously competent" and can't explain their own success. Before an SKO, leaders must help these individuals deconstruct their process and build a prescriptive presentation, translating their individual "art" into a replicable science for the entire sales team.

The best test of knowledge is the ability to teach it. By having employees explain a new AI tool or workflow to their peers, they are forced to solidify their own understanding and identify knowledge gaps. This process turns passive learning into active expertise.

Instead of traditional classroom training, Stone would take new salespeople on live sales calls. They'd observe him, attempt a pitch themselves, and receive immediate feedback. This rapid, immersive cycle built competence and confidence quickly, even for those without a college degree.

Inspired by military training for tacit knowledge transfer, this method overcomes the feedback problem in abstract skills like meditation. The novice meditates aloud, describing their internal state. An expert listens and provides real-time suggestions, effectively transferring their intuition about what cues to notice and how to respond.

Rather than passively waiting for model improvements, 'skill engineering' is emerging as a discipline. It involves actively encoding expert workflows, quality gates, and even subjective 'taste' into portable components for AI agents, allowing organizations to consistently improve agent performance on specific tasks.

Experts in high-stakes fields like fighter piloting don't rely on rules or procedures. They build tacit knowledge, an intuitive ability to assess complex situations where checklists are insufficient. This contradicts the common belief that expertise is simply about mastering a set of rules.

Top performers are frequently unable to teach their skills effectively because doing and teaching are separate abilities. Their verbal explanations may be inaccurate post-rationalizations. To truly learn from the best, ignore their narratives and instead meticulously observe and replicate their specific, observable behaviors.

Instead of formal training, pair tech-native junior employees with experienced senior leaders. This apprenticeship model combines the juniors' technical fluency with the seniors' business context and judgment, creating a more powerful and effective way to integrate AI and drive innovation.

Team members learn the capabilities and best practices for using their own AI agents by observing others' interactions in public channels. This "mid journey dynamic" creates a tacit transmission of knowledge about what's possible, accelerating the entire organization's learning curve much faster than formal training.