Become Agile to Land on Your Feet in Business - CareerAlley

Become Agile to Land on Your Feet in Business - CareerAlley We may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners. Author: Donald Mitchell Many people imagine that their lives will follow a comfortable, predictable route, much as might occur while taking a short trip to visit a friend. Except for the possibility of occasional minor accidents and illnesses, such imagined lives are anticipated to be long, smooth, and pleasant. By contrast, older people often report that their lives have been affected by unexpected setbacks, challenges, and strains that they would have preferred to miss. All but a few of these individuals also cite examples of people whose lives have been even more difficult than their own. Let me share a few of my own examples. I well remember a hard-working, well-regarded executive whose wife died while their three children were young. Naturally, raising the youngsters became the center of his life, rather than advancing what could have been an outstanding career. I also remember a heartbroken leader of an organization that marketed alcoholic beverages and whose teenaged son died in an automobile accident that involved underage drinking. This man looked more like death at the funeral than his deceased son did. After that, his life was never the same. Our lives aren affected just by what happens to our families. Unexpected results can directly affect us. As a young consultant, I worked with hard-driving MBAs who started running daily. I didn join them, lazily feeling that Id done enough exercise as a teenager to last me a lifetime. Within five years, each of these men died either while or right after running. Ive often wondered what each one might have achieved with a longer life. As bad as dying young is, disability can be an even greater problem. A man I know was on the way to a meeting when his taxi was involved in a minor traffic accident. Although feeling a little woozy, he went to the meeting. Unfortunately, he collapsed just a few hours later and had to be rushed to the hospital. Due to the delay in seeking treatment, he suffered permanent damage that left him disabled and able to do little more than simple tasks for the rest of his life. Business opportunities change, as well. Some of the most desirable business jobs in information technology once involved writing software programs in COBOL, one of the first commonly used programming languages. Since then, a great many programs have been written in COBOL. However, during those same decades, most new programs were written in more sophisticated and effective languages. Millions of the original COBOL programs are still being used, and many of the people who can update and fix them have spent their careers doing some of the least challenging and rewarding work available in information technology. Many of these people wish that they had never learned COBOL. Anyones career would be much affected by encountering any of these difficulties. Although we can hope and pray to avoid such adversities, not all of them will be eluded. What lessons should you draw from the very real risk of having to struggle with them? Consider cats. People sometimes refer to these felines as having nine lives. Others talk about how cats always land on their feet. Combining those perspectives is a useful way to think about better ways of dealing with major setbacks by being prepared. Lets begin to think about what anyone should be prepared to deal with in a business career. Here are some of the things that its a good idea to prepare for: 1. Not liking the kind of work you are doing 2. Lacking knowledge or skill to make career progress 3. Experiencing long periods of difficult economic or industry conditions 4. Living with failed health personally or in your family 5. Being overcommitted to work in ways that harm your family 6. Developing new professional interests What form should your preparations take? Consider people who deal with medical emergencies. They are trained in lifesaving and first-aid practices for the most critical tasks that can arise. When an emergency occurs, these individuals then use their training to take the right actions at the proper time. It might seem to you that such an approach isn going to work for a business career. After all, there are so many things to prepare for that it could take you until you were middle-aged before you would be ready for all of them. Whats the alternative? You can instead master learning quickly and effectively how to apply what you need for dealing with whatever arises. Heres a list of some useful skills for doing so: 1. Increase reading speed. Most businesspeople read at less than 15 percent of the speed they could comfortably master with six months of regular practice. This adjustment would increase potential learning by almost six times. 2. Improve comprehension of what is read. Most people can fully understand less than half of the work-related material that they study. Come close to 100 percent in understanding, and learning effectiveness can almost double again. 3. Extend recall of what has been learned. Two years later, most people can barely remember anything about what has been read. Yet by taking careful notes and storing useful abstracts, understanding can be refreshed quite rapidly. Performing such tasks takes little extra time, yet can increase effectiveness by another five to ten times. 4. Develop more experience and skill in applying newly learned information and knowledge. This effectiveness can be gained quite easily by directly applying what has been learned to appropriate work tasks. Just pick the learning to occur at a time when it can be easily applied to some work that has to be done. Keep applying what you just learned, and better results will follow. Making this change can expand effectiveness by as much as another 40 times. I recently shared these observations with Dean Alan Guinn of Rushmore University and asked for his thoughts concerning the role of improving reading as a way to prepare for handling the challenges that face almost all business careers. Here is what he had to say: Businesspeople must read, read, read and then read some more. Understand that reading skills help point the way to success and as more and more of us become ever more deeply involved with technology, our ability to read, absorb, write about, and utilize what we learn through reading and application will become ever more important. If a businessperson was blessed by an adult who taught him (or her) an appreciation for reading at an early age, she or he was well blessed. If someone did not have that benefit at an early age, such skills can be formed now. The most agile and successful businesspeople are the ones who are best prepared to learn and quickly apply whats needed to an unexpected circumstance, whether a threat or an opportunity. If your learning skills are fully developed, relax. Youll be ready whenever circumstances change, and opportunities and difficulties arrive. If you could use some work in improving such effectiveness, why not start now? It never hurts to practice becoming more agile before the need arises. Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/career-management-articles/become-agile-to-land-on-your-feet-in-business-6744244.html About the Author Donald W. Mitchell is a professor at Rushmore University who often teaches people who want to improve their business effectiveness in order to accomplish career breakthroughs through earning advanced degrees. For more information about ways to engage in fruitful lifelong learning at Rushmore University to increase your effectiveness, I invite you to visit http://www.rushmore.edu This is a Guest post. If you would like to submit a guest post to CareerAlley, please follow these guest post guidelines. Good luck in your search. Joey Trebif //