Give yourself the gift of learning
As holidays and New Year’s Day approach, give yourself a gift that will serve you well for many years to come: the gift of learning. It’s one of the few gifts that can last a lifetime.
Marketing managers from several companies inspired me to write this blog by sharing valid complaints about their departments:
- “I wish I had a boss that I could learn from.”
- “I’m too busy to learn anything new.”
- “When we make mistakes, we don’t learn from them.”
Let’s listen to each of these complaints closely to see what we can learn.
“I wish I had a boss that I could learn from.”
Here’s the sad truth about bosses: In my corporate career I had 52 bosses.
I learned valuable ideas from 10 of them. I learned how not to act from 10 others. And the other 32 bosses just didn’t make a difference in the long run. So, you can’t depend on bosses to teach you what you need to learn.
Your professional development is so valuable that you can’t delegate it to anyone else. Not to a teacher or guru, not to organizational development, not up to your boss. When it comes to professional development, that’s on you.
Lessons can be given, but to harvest all the benefit out of them, it’s your job to:
- Take away the most valuable morsels of insights.
- Find a way to put these insights into practice.
- Internalize your learning by using it and sharing it with colleagues.
If your company doesn’t bother to foster professional development, you still can:
- Read the best blogs, magazines, newsletters and books in your field.
- Join a professional association or community that enables you to network with peers. Participate in their activities.
- Apply what you learn by conducting experiments and pilot projects at work. Make a small, unexpected success happen, so you can scale it up and have a big success.
Or switch to a company that does invest in your personal development. Find a place with a new boss you can learn from.
“I’m too busy to learn anything new.”
Treat professional development like the downpayment on your house. It’s the first thing you do, not the last. Don’t let anyone squeeze your time so hard you lack the time to learn new things.
That said, I must admit that it is hard to not be spread too thin. I get it. I’m busy too. But it’s because I said “yes” when I should have said “no” to optional pieces of work.
Decades into my career, I have never, ever completed everything on my monthly to do list. The amount of work available to do is stuck on permanent overflow. I don’t see that changing, so I need to work with it.
So, use your power to say “no.” Which means you have to pick and choose what you need to stop so you can make the time for learning, which will enable you to grow and become more and more valuable to the business over time.
“When we make mistakes, we don’t learn from them.”
Ouch! This is the most painful complaint to hear. It comes from marketing departments that scurry all day and night because they have so much to deliver, but they don’t take the time to recognize failures and successes.
Investigate any success, and behind it you’ll find a trial-and-error springboard.
I’m inspired by the example of Thomas Edison, who failed 2774 times to invent a lightbulb that worked. But on the 2775th try, his lightbulb lit up – and it changed the world.
It’s ok to fail. When you fail, first admit it to yourself. To find out why you failed, create a good hypothesis to test.
So, the next time, you can try a fresh approach, with the advantage that you’re fully aware of a built-in trap to avoid. With patience and persistence, chances are your next outcome will be better … and better … and better.
When you succeed where you had failed before, take the time to study what changed. How did you improve the odds in your own favor? So you can replicate success.
Should you invest in cryptocurrency, the stock market, or real estate? I don’t know.
But I can tell you this: every investment you make in yourself is worthwhile. Learning is your path to success.