You can have more than you have, if you become more than you are! It is an unending challenge to become better than you are. Unless you are stealing, you cannot earn more than your skills worth. So the challenge for you and I would be to become much better than we are. What is your chosen profession or occupation? Are you on top of your game? If people seek a person to do the job you do, would your name come up anywhere on the list?
Success should not be your pursuit. Success should pursue you. If you have enough skill at your chosen profession and you acquire the highest level of competence, success will pursue you. You will always have work to do. In fact in many cases, you would be so overwhelmed that you would need help and that is when you should expand.
So become more than you are so you can have more than you have at present. The major key to your better future is you! What are you doing with you? Are you making excuses about your current situation and circumstances? Are you blaming the economy or the government? There is a skill set that the upwardly mobile person should possess that would aid him on his way up:
Success should not be your pursuit. Success should pursue you. If you have enough skill at your chosen profession and you acquire the highest level of competence, success will pursue you.
- Communication: We all need to be able to communicate. Never think that you have reached the highest rung of your communication ability. There is always room for you to get better. Take a course in public speaking. Practice addressing audiences if you have not started already. Can you analyze issues before an audience, explain a complex procedure or process? Good communicators often make good leaders.
- Analytical and Research skills are closely related to communication. Can you break complex information down into understandable chunks for people to understand? You also ought to be able to dig into the background and research issues, gather facts that might be useful for decision making.
III. Flexibility and Adaptability is a part of the skill set that enables us to adjust to changing situations. The work environment needs individuals who can be resilient in times of challenges and adjust to prevailing situations. Flexibility and adaptability shows in our ability to change routines if need be, seek out and understand cultures that are different from ours and relate to people we have never met before. Malcom Gladwell, award winning writer, wrote a book titled “Talking to Strangers” in which he explained that if we all tried harder to relate with strangers in our work and personal life it would improve our abilities drastically.
If the government does not change the country for things to change for you, you have to change. Or else nothing will change. Decide to become much better than you are.
- Working in groups and teams is a major challenge for some people. The manner of trusting a person and relying on him to complete a part of a task so that your work looks good is a major issue. More than ever before the corporate environment is realizing that “no man is an island” and we need people around us to complement our abilities.
Are you blaming the traffic or the car or the transport system or the security system? I once did a seminar for a Micro Finance Bank. I discovered that some people do better than others even in the same environment. I teach that you cannot control your environment. Even though we cannot always control all of our environment, the number of hours we have in a day, and the tools that the company provides for us, we can control our skill. We primarily get paid for value. Not necessarily the time we put into a job. Is it possible to become twice or three times as valuable? Can we make twice as much money in the market in which we operate? Two people can work on the same job in the same environment while one makes twice as much money as the other. If you work on yourself, you can make twice as much money. To become above average in our earnings we must become an above average operative at our work place. Before you look for that high paying job, make sure you have high earning skills. We must all learn to work harder on ourselves than we do on our jobs. We must become so good that we are almost irreplaceable at the job we do. That is the challenge for us all today. So if you are reading this, it’s time for real change. If the government does not change the country for things to change for you, you have to change. Or else nothing will change. Decide to become much better than you are. I wish you well.
*Ogundadegbe is a renowned management consultant. He trains managers and executives in the arts of Customer Service, Human Resources Management and Management strategy ([email protected]).
