I regularly review contract schedules providing for continuous improvement by the providers of outsourcing services. They generally require or at least encourage the supplier to consider how its processes and service delivery mechanisms can be improved and to advise the customer how these improvements can enhance the service and be introduced into the contract.
Only recently did I start to consider this concept in a different light. As professionals surely we should also be seeking always to improve our knowledge and ability to serve our clients. Yet in reality this is not easy. We tend to be, if we are honest, both a little proud and protective of our skills. Yes we readily participate in continuous professional development to keep our skills up to date, but that is not the same thing as always striving to do our jobs that much better.
To some extent in order to get to where we are now, to become a successful consultant, doctor or lawyer, we have always had to be bright and hard working and if not top of the class at least in the upper quartile. So it is easy to assume a "fixed mindset" as opposed to a "growth mindset" - see Carole Dweck's excellent book Mindsets for an exposition on the vital differences between these two approaches.
In simple terms a tendency to be content with our achievements to date and not want to exceed them. A Japanese landscape painter Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849 Tokyo) said "...since the age of fifty I have published many drawings, yet of all I drew by my seventieth year there is nothing worth taking in to account. At seventy-three years I partly understood the structure of animals, birds, insects and fishes, and the life of grasses and plants. And so, at eighty-six I shall progress further; at ninety I shall even further penetrate their secret meaning, and by one hundred I shall perhaps truly have reached the level of the marvellous and divine."
This I propose is the spirit we should approach our professional jobs, always looking for ways to understand and improve and do things better. Apart from anything else it makes working life more challenging and interesting. In reality no client problem, no contract negotiation are ever really the same and we can learn from all of them and apply that learning to the next assignment.
Only recently did I start to consider this concept in a different light. As professionals surely we should also be seeking always to improve our knowledge and ability to serve our clients. Yet in reality this is not easy. We tend to be, if we are honest, both a little proud and protective of our skills. Yes we readily participate in continuous professional development to keep our skills up to date, but that is not the same thing as always striving to do our jobs that much better.
To some extent in order to get to where we are now, to become a successful consultant, doctor or lawyer, we have always had to be bright and hard working and if not top of the class at least in the upper quartile. So it is easy to assume a "fixed mindset" as opposed to a "growth mindset" - see Carole Dweck's excellent book Mindsets for an exposition on the vital differences between these two approaches.
In simple terms a tendency to be content with our achievements to date and not want to exceed them. A Japanese landscape painter Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849 Tokyo) said "...since the age of fifty I have published many drawings, yet of all I drew by my seventieth year there is nothing worth taking in to account. At seventy-three years I partly understood the structure of animals, birds, insects and fishes, and the life of grasses and plants. And so, at eighty-six I shall progress further; at ninety I shall even further penetrate their secret meaning, and by one hundred I shall perhaps truly have reached the level of the marvellous and divine."
This I propose is the spirit we should approach our professional jobs, always looking for ways to understand and improve and do things better. Apart from anything else it makes working life more challenging and interesting. In reality no client problem, no contract negotiation are ever really the same and we can learn from all of them and apply that learning to the next assignment.
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