professional
Are you a resilient professional?
There are four traits of a ‘super’ professional: resilience, autonomy, agility and clarity. So let us start with resilience, which means the capacity to recover quickly from difficulty, or adversity or setbacks – or in one word ‘toughness’. Dean Becker from Adaptiv Learning Systems found that the level of resilience a person exhibits determines their success, far more…
Read MoreHow to avoid overwhelm and complete projects
Whenever you have a deadline, somehow, you’re able to get the job done working right up to the deadline. But other projects never seem to get done. We need to complete projects that are urgent, but projects that are very important but not so urgent often gets left for tomorrow (and maybe never!). How do…
Read More7 success principles to make business case options real
Preparing a business case is about deciding on the option that promises the best return, relative to the risk of failure involved. What are the success principles that help you in developing a robust business case? For a private investor considering an investment, the project option that returns the best profit, relative to the amount…
Read MoreProfessionals need to use strategic thinking
When you hear the words strategic thinking what comes to mind?Do you shudder and say to yourself — not for me? Or do you glaze over and just want to get on with the job at hand? Plan your work, work your plan I’ve observed that many professionals only plan their work one day at a time. They…
Read MoreWhat can you do about the half-life of your professional knowledge?
With the exponential growth in information, professionals face a knowledge half-life dilemma. I love the line in Men in Black where Tommy Lee Jone’s character says: 1,500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you…
Read MoreProfessional Identity: Who am I?
Professional identity involves at least partially answering the question ‘who am I?’. For a professional it is how you perceive yourself in relation to your profession and your membership of that profession. Identity is created through beliefs and attitudes, values, motives and experiences through which you define yourself, in your professional life. It is associated…
Read MoreWhat are you doing to progress your career?
Are you concerned about where your career is heading? Maybe you are unhappy in your job or feel your skill and expertise are not being full use. In reality you are in control. You can control how to progress your career. Technical professionals who are prepared, have enormous opportunities in the next decade. This is because of…
Read MoreAre you a Hedgehog or a Fox?
The first known recording of this observation was a written fragment from Ancient Greek Poet Archilochus around 680 BC: The fox knows many things; the hedgehog one big thing. “The Hedgehog and The Fox” was also the title of an essay by philosopher Isaiah Berlin in the 1950’s. And Jim Collin’s in his book Good to Great refers to the…
Read MoreAre you concerned about your future professional career?
Let’s talk about where professional’s careers are heading and what you can do to be more successful. What do you think the world will be like in 10 years’ time? If you cast your mind back 10 years, you couldn’t have imagined the developments that have occurred in that time. There have been massive changes in…
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