So while on a break down in Queenstown, New Zealand’s winter wonderland, I had some time to think about the nature of cobwebs and professional development.
As consultants and professionals we are continually striving to come up with that magic solution for our clients, the road untraveled, the thought no one else has had.
But coming up with these innovative ideas requires not only imagination, but a continual regime of learning and development. In our busy consulting world it's hard to schedule and commit time to professional development. If we do, it tends to be the ‘just enough and just in time’ model. Worse still, we force feed ourselves on short articles shared by others, or ‘in our feeds’ and then re-share and promote these articles, continuing this shallow embracing of full concepts.
Don’t get me wrong, short articles have value and sharing material has value. It doesn’t replace the uniqueness of time spent contemplating true innovation, going ‘down the rabbit hole’ and evaluating the things that aren’t just regurgitations of shared material. The irony of me posting a ‘short’ article is not lost either, but this is what we have come to - sharing insights in ‘snack pack’ sizes hoping to get across the message in as few words as possible. Having the time to consume larger material has become generally deprioritised.
So what does this have to do with a winter wonderland? It’s about recharging our battery of innovation. Consciously blowing away the cobwebs and providing a real opportunity for reflection. Making that time to learn, think, and invent that comes when the mind isn’t running at full steam ahead.
Thinking and advancing ourselves takes as much effort as doing the work that pays the bills. As professional consultants we have an obligation to our clients and to ourselves to deliberately make the time to create the right environments to think differently and find that edge that defines the next value.
As an organisation we need to ensure that our staff have the time to be different, be thoughtful and be reflective. We have to ensure this gets done - its the only way that change and advancement happens in our profession.
At Cyma not only do we track how much effort and time our people are putting into professional development time - we have measured targets. It's on every people manager to make sure our people get time to blow away their cobwebs and spend that effort to advance themselves and us. It’s far too important to ignore and too easy to forget.
