Let No Obstacle Deny Nor Any Achievement Quench Your Thirst For Self-improvement In Business
To have the business success you want, how much should you try to improve and for how long
? My observation has been that most people stop trying to accomplish more in most areas of their lives at quite a young age, comfortable with then expecting a steady loss in performance as they age.Let me explain why I think such mental inertia is a big mistake for many people in terms of a business career, an area where learning from experience and adding skills counts for a lot.
When young people see someone two generations older, they usually imagine that mental sharpness can be accurately assessed by looking at physical appearance. The young people assume an aged, reduced mind closely parallels an aged, reduced body.
Did you know that you can employ and enjoy a young viewpoint at any age and use that perspective to your advantage in business? I remember being surprised the first time an older person told me that he thought of himself as perpetually twenty years old and worked at keeping that outlook, even though his body had moved past that point many decades earlier.
I was recently reminded of the older person's comment about mental age when I fantasized for a bit about going to a baseball camp to meet and play with some of my team's heroes. That sounded like great fun!
I awoke to the reality that attending this camp wasn't such a good idea after I bent over and realized that I'm no longer flexible enough to reach more than a short distance for ground balls. It would be a disaster trying to play at such a camp. So much for that idea!
What can I do instead that's new and fun? Well, I can learn something that's not as demanding of physical flexibility and experience great joy because the first steps in learning something new can be very wonderful.
While learning a new subject you can go quickly from having no idea of what's happening to suddenly noticing new patterns as well as appreciating things you've recognized before, but didn't understand. As you gain knowledge and skill, your curiosity grows and you develop self-esteem from your growing ability to handle something that always seemed beyond you.
Such learning is experienced most often while young in accomplishing physical tasks such as riding a two-wheeled bicycle. Before learning to ride, all that swaying of the bike from left to right and back again just looks strange. After you get the feel of the sway, you know that moving that way to the correct rhythm gives you better balance, control, and power.
When you learn mental tasks instead of physical tasks, you gain an advantage that I want to explore with you: You can hope to improve performance further and for longer periods of time. As a result, you can enjoy more satisfying progress that fills you with optimism about the future.
Educators often refer to this step as going from unconscious incompetence (automatically doing the wrong thing) to conscious incompetence (being aware of where you need to be careful).
Later, you master everything that needs to be done . . . but a lot of mental focus is required. That stage is often called conscious competence. You enjoy the results from this competence, but not the effort.
Finally, you are able to do something effortlessly without paying much attention (like driving a vehicle over a route you know very well), a stage that's called unconscious competence. Although you are getting great results, joy from your performance may decline leaving you feeling a little bored. Michael Jordan's first retirement from basketball to start a professional baseball career instead was an example of this phenomenon.
When you start to get bored, do yourself a big favor and begin to learn something new that builds on the skill at which you are unconsciously competent. Here's an example: An effective salesperson who normally deals with English-speaking people could learn a second language and develop a new sales approach for people who speak that language.
Business provides many such opportunities to build on unconscious competence:
salespeople can learn to sell more valuable offerings
engineers can develop design skills that make offerings more attractive to customers
marketing people can master new ways of drawing customers
financial people can teach others how to understand the financial implications of their decisions
You may be concerned that you don't learn as fast or as easily as you once did. That may be true, but you also have a lot of experience. With experience comes the ability to avoid mistakes you've made and seen others make, whether in learning new things or in applying them.
My observation has been that useful experience seems to grow faster than learning ability declines, except for those with various forms of dementia. The favorable combination of experience growing faster than learning capability ebbs means that businesspeople who layer new skills and knowledge onto their unconscious competences become ever more effective.
Increased effectiveness, in turn, brings new assignments, opportunities, and challenges. Those new circumstances can be invigorating . . . and make you feel even more enthusiastic. To understand these points better, let's look at an example of someone who brings an unquenchable thirst for self-improvement to his business career, Dr. Salim Al Riyami, a Doctor of Business Administration degree holder from Rushmore University.
Dr. Al Riyami is a citizen of Oman who grew up in Egypt. Education was considered to be important in his family. While his parents' work required them to live in areas where educational choices were limited, the family decided that he would live instead with his grandparents who could provide access to much better schools.
After finishing his secondary education, Dr. Al Riyami's parents retired to Oman and the family was reunited there. Pleased to be in Oman, he chose Sultan Qaboos University (S.Q.U.) there for his college work, desiring to learn skills that would be of help to his country.
He didn't know what would follow his college studies but acted in the firm conviction that "only education would give me the opportunity to find my interests and enrich my soul." The college studies led him to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture from S.Q.U.
Dr. Al Riyami had long yearned for a career in business management, but S.Q.U. at the time did not offer that curriculum so he had to find a different route into business. He was fortunate to gain a position with Bank Muscat, one of Oman's best banks. While there, he took intensive courses to fill in knowledge about accounting and finance that he needed. He made rapid career progress as he learned.
With his thirst for learning about business management unquenched, he next headed for the United Kingdom where he undertook a full-time MBA program, intending to return to Bank Muscat after graduation to apply lots of new knowledge about human resources management.
After graduating, he returned to Oman where instead he was pleased to attract a very desirable job offer to work in human resources for Oman International Bank. Within three years, he was leading the bank's recruitment program for bringing more Omani university graduates into management to replace expatriates.
An unexpected family opportunity arose when his wife received a prestigious grant to undertake advanced study in hematology in Australia. Dr. Al Riyami saw this move as an opportunity to learn more, rather than as a career setback. He resigned from the bank and began studies at MGSM, one of the leading business schools in Australia.
While working on his next degree, he began to realize that his career interests lay more in teaching about business than in working for businesses. He developed a desire to become a business professor at S.Q.U. In preparation for that new career, his studies at MGSM focused on research methods management, the field in which he earned an M.A. degree.
With two years remaining for his wife's studies in Australia, Dr. Al Riyami decided to earn a doctorate in business. During the DBA program, he studied how educational organizations develop competitive advantages, how technology changes affect organizations, and many advanced topics in human resources management.
Upon returning from Australia, he obtained a better post in a highly admired organization than the position he had left. He retains an interest in beginning academic career, teaching business at some point in the future.
I asked Dr. Al Riyami about the educational philosophy for developing his career interests. Here are a few of the comments that he kindly shared:
"No achievement can quench my thirst for self-improvement. My personal credo is to always 'go further' -- to find innovative ways to accomplish goals and to realize my full potential in every aspect of both my educational and professional careers.
"Both my wife and I believe that education is always an investment rather than a financial burden. Though expenses are involved in education, the reward is massive."
I also asked him about how education has changed his life:
"I feel more knowledgeable and more confident, both at work and off work. I am now able to discuss, argue, and debate in logical and fact-based ways, not just emotionally."
Where will Dr. Al Riyami's thirst for learning take him next? It's hard to say, but I suspect that it's to the top either in business or academia after still more educational adventures. Who knows what valuable insights, decisions, and books lie fallow within him, still waiting to be developed?
The same can be said of your potential to reach the top . . . if you let no obstacle deny nor any achievement quench your thirst for improvement.
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