Insufficient ability, reading books is useless: ability development in the workplace depends on deep thinking and practice
Subordinates are very anxious recently. After comparing with the classmates at the university, we found that we were either behind in terms of income or position, and more importantly, we compared the professional level with classmates who had also graduated for a year or two. This significant gap made He was anxious and determined to improve his expertise, skills and abilities.
In order to change this situation, he began to read a lot of books every day, including books in the professional field, books in the management field that he was almost impossible to get involved in, and some cutting-edge theoretical books that he had difficulty understanding, etc. Come and see, and even prepare one or two professional questions every day to discuss and communicate with me, hoping to achieve rapid improvement through this.
After a period of time, I wanted to see how he was uplifted, so I asked him some very practical questions in his work, but he couldn't answer it. I asked why, and he said that he studied everything and watched everything, but what he learned None of this is enough to solve the problem.
His problem is also the problem of most people in the workplace. The key is that he did not find an effective way to improve his ability, but vented his anxiety on various ineffective diligence. In the workplace, you need to be able to take a higher position in the future. It is a wrong logic to prepare your ability when the opportunity comes. In the workplace, you have the corresponding ability and performance, and the position will be open to you, not waiting for you to enter. It is only after obtaining a position that one learns the corresponding ability, which makes every person in the workplace have a requirement for the development of professional ability and must develop their ability for the future.
Cai Kangyong once said: When you were 15 years old, you felt that swimming was difficult, so you gave up swimming. When you were 18, when someone you liked asked you to go swimming, you had to say 'I can't do it'. At the age of 18, you find English difficult, and give up English. At the age of 28, you have a great job but you need to know English, and you have to say 'I can't do it'. The more troublesome you are in the early stage of life, the more lazy you are to learn, the more likely you will miss the people and things that make you tempted later on, and miss the new scenery.
Insufficient ability, reading books is useless: ability development in the workplace depends on deep thinking and practice
And effective ability development is not ineffective diligence. Effective improvement should include these four steps:
- Find the target direction
Without a goal direction, just like the people in the opening case, they want to learn everything. Time and resources are limited. If we cannot allocate resources in the right direction, we will find that we have learned a lot of things that we have learned after dinner, and cannot really be transformed into the knowledge and skills that we have systematically mastered.
For example, a novice HR has multiple development directions such as recruitment, training, and compensation in the future, but he has not clearly defined his own development direction from the beginning, and he has only tasted any field. After a few years, he will find that he is still at a shallow level in various fields. At the business level, I don’t understand the content of depth at all, and the cumulative effect and efficiency of such a few years are so low.
Therefore, at any stage of your career, you need to clarify your development direction in the next three to five years, outline your ability composition according to the development direction, and then focus continuously in the process, using all time, material, and energy resources. To improve the skills in one direction, the 10,000-hour rule will take effect on oneself.
At the same time, there is no need to worry about the lack of depth and lack of ability and skill breadth. First of all, in the process of deep eye contact, there will be a malleable ability to touch, and the process of touch will require us to master the knowledge of cross-domain to varying degrees. Secondly, the ability development plan is not a single path to the end. The ability path is formulated according to the needs of the position. When our career planning is to take the professional route in the early stage and then the management route in the later stage, then this path will also require We will expand the skill area horizontally at a certain time. But the premise must be that you have the domain skills that you are proficient in and can be on your own.
Insufficient ability, reading books is useless: ability development in the workplace depends on deep thinking and practice
- Learn to do difficult things
Humans are inherently lazy and inertial. When we are used to doing simple things, we will "indulge" in the easy state. For example, when we face complicated things every day, we are used to doing simple and easy things first, such as coordinating a difficult-to-communicate leader and superior to say that you will help you come forward and get it done, and you will depend on your superior.
It turned out that a colleague in charge of recruitment was very afraid of facing high-level candidates when recruiting for high-end positions. He felt oppressed, communication was not on the same channel, and he was often questioned by candidates. Later, his superiors directly asked him to find his resume. Then contact another colleague to get in touch.
Over the past few years, this recruited colleague has been stuck in the low-value-added operation of looking for resumes, and the combined knowledge and ability to face high-end talents has not improved at all. Correspondingly, another colleague who took this opportunity to handle this business became the team leader of the recruitment.
Staying in the comfort zone of affairs for a long time will keep our abilities in a low-level state. In order to improve the ability, it is necessary to carry out the deep-water area of the ability, constantly trial and error in the content of the job, and constantly try the content of the deeper field.
In any link of business promotion, as long as a difficult problem is found, whether it is technology or communication and coordination, this is a lack of ability, and it is a difficult thing. No matter how difficult it is, dare to break through. After long-term grinding to solve this difficult area, we must look for the next one. In the past, the entire ability can be raised through continuous polishing.
Insufficient ability, reading books is useless: ability development in the workplace depends on deep thinking and practice
- Practice more, do not stay at the shallow concept of knowledge
Mastering new knowledge is a positive way of coping with ability development, but many people's mastering new knowledge remains in a state of shallow taste, such as listening to some big coffees sharing the frontiers of the industry, such as reading some articles, and even researching some obscure theories.
Most of these learnings stay at the shallow conceptual level. Apart from knowing the concepts, the understanding of the application is almost 0, so the knowledge projected into the work still cannot create value, let alone the ability development. I used to have a subordinate who loves to talk to me about some cutting-edge knowledge in the HR field, including the three pillars of human resources, the diamond model of human resources, etc. These exchanges only stop at the exchange of knowledge concepts, and he has never thought about applying them to work.
In order to transform the depth of knowledge into a part of one's own ability, it must be practiced.
The process of practice can integrate knowledge points into specific things, and improve our understanding of the knowledge system for ourselves. At the same time, we must also know that knowledge and even experience cannot be applied in different scenarios, and we need to face different problems. The organic use of knowledge to form solutions, practice is such a process.
Therefore, we cannot stop at a shallow conceptual cognition, and feel that we have grown up after reading many cutting-edge theoretical terms and new knowledge concepts. Instead, we should practice and apply all kinds of knowledge in work scenarios.
Insufficient ability, reading books is useless: ability development in the workplace depends on deep thinking and practice
- In-depth thinking and self-argumentation
There are many problems that may not have the opportunity to be practiced, and there are also some problems that may not be practiced, such as some theories, such as the perception of some phenomena, etc., and in the face of such problems, deep thinking and self-argumentation is a kind of learning. depth method. Knowledge can be built more systematically. for example:
Many people in the workplace will see a phenomenon. Regarding the situation of snitching at work, many bosses are happy to listen to other people's snitching, and even believe the snitching. Most people analyze this phenomenon. Think it's because the boss doesn't trust the person who got the snitch.
This is the depth of thinking of most people, and it ends at this level. But such an analysis is not of great value to us, because he can draw conclusions without thinking too deeply, and there is no theoretical basis for such thinking results.
If you think deeply, you need to progress layer by layer. Why is the person who gets a small report not trusted by the boss, because trust needs to be established, which comes from the principles of psychology. What channels and problems need to be solved to build trust, which leads to deeper thinking.
This kind of thinking becomes more and more profound, and then the essence of the problem is also excavated deeper and deeper. It is important for us to understand the problem, the preparation and consolidation of the knowledge involved in solving this problem, and the systematic degree of the problem itself. With a qualitative leap, and at the same time developing this kind of deep thinking system, our perspective and thinking of insight into affairs will be different from that of ordinary people.
In the whole process, our abilities, knowledge and skills are practiced in our thoughts once, plus we conduct self-argumentation and finally constantly correct various viewpoints, and then we come to a systematic understanding. With such in-depth thinking on any theory and any problem, our knowledge system will be opened up and sublimated once.
Insufficient ability, reading books is useless: ability development in the workplace depends on deep thinking and practice
This is our 4-step method for developing our own capabilities. The key lies in establishing goals, thinking deeply, practicing, and constantly trying difficult tasks, and finally we can harvest the rapid growth of capabilities.