For the greater part of industrialization, success has been measured by the extent of an individual’s personal development and business achievements. It makes sense that with increased knowledge, the value of a person’s contribution will increase. Further, when business and personal development are aligned with organizational objectives, it leads to a mutually beneficial professional relationship.
If you care about upward mobility then continuous development is old hat. In the digital era, and information age, it is the people who are committed to business and personal development who reach new levels in their chosen fields. The global marketplace continues to evolve, and demands will change as well. Those who are future minded are the ones who will thrive despite the changes.
Yet, personal development needs to be an ongoing goal. Time needs to be allocated, regularly, to ensure business and personal development is prioritized. When people, and their employers, understand how vital personal growth is - that is when the magic happens. All of a sudden, work tasks become easier to understand and complete. Further, people will become more capable of focusing on higher-value tasks such as strategic and competitive work within the company.
Now, let’s explore some of the other benefits of business and personal development.
Understand your current state
Once you start the learning process, you will also figure out just how much you need to learn or where you are in your journey. So then, it really starts with figuring out where you are right now. Understanding your weaknesses will help you better determine what to work on first. Let’s take this a step further below:
- Focus on the process not the goal.
- How would you process it? What steps would you take?
- Track and monitor your process.
- Make a game of it.
Make sure your goals are realistic so that you are more motivated towards achieving them. And, think about how you can achieve your goals step by step. For example, if you wanted to earn an additional $300 a week in commissions as a jewelry salesperson, think of how many more pieces you would need to sell per day and what types of jewelry you would need to sell. What type of customers would you need to come into the store?
Certainly, you can include gamification aspects into your goal achievement. Say if you were to reach 25% of your goal, you might give yourself a gold star or something else to improve your motivation.
Improve your motivation
Once you are completely aware of your current level of skills, you start to understand the positive impact of business and personal development. Next thing you know, you start to work differently while having the ability to work smarter, which then induces greater productivity. As you continue, your colleagues will notice the change as well. You’ll have more confidence in your skills which will lead you to pursuing greater achievements.
Achieve long-term career goals
It’s one thing to ask for a raise or a promotion. It’s another thing to be the most qualified person that you’re deluged with offers left and right. In the workplace, personal development should be closely linked to the skills needed to improve your work.
As a result, you should have an idea of which skills you need to focus on to achieve your long-term career goals. Remember, these skills can also change over time so learning never ends. By learning these skills, you enhance your chances for promotion and salary increases. Also, you might find work more enjoyable since you’re better at it. Now, let’s get a bit more granular for how you can do this:
- Create a system.
- Learning more about what exercises can help you to get into better shape is a system.
- Get the system right, then working out becomes easier.
- Learning how to stay away from distractions improves productivity.
- Increasing social interactions in your life might be your goal, but prioritizing time for this activity in your calendar is a system.
- The right systems must come before goals. To achieve your goals successfully, you need a system.
This is about the combination of short-term gains with an eye towards the long-term attainment. When you highlight your short-term task accomplishments you feel more positive about your work towards achieving your goal. In addition, this helps to keep you on track. There will be the inevitable ups and downs, but when you focus on the systems, eventually you will reach your long-term goals.
Is there a platform you can use to ensure productivity?
If you want to take this a step further, the world’s leading platform for driving productivity is Microsoft Office. Whether it is analyzing data through Excel or communicating with remote teams via Outlook, you can enjoy the benefits of universal software available at any time, to anyone with an Internet connection - as long as you have an Office 365 login.
In fact, around 20% of the world’s population already uses Microsoft Office 365. Not to mention, the Microsoft Office library offers 15 interactive courses on Excel, Outlook, Access, PowerPoint, and Word.
Moreover, you get online support when needed. Yet, the most important aspect is Microsoft Office is easy to use for anyone who wants to improve efficiency and use any of the programs to reach their goals. For instance, if you wanted to track sales progress you could configure Microsoft Excel to track your achievements.
Once you have reached your goal and want to make a presentation, you can use Microsoft PowerPoint. Microsoft Office makes goal achievement easy because the suite is adaptable to your needs. Plus, Microsoft Office offers a bevy of tutorials under the e-Careers section.
One way to increase learning opportunities, and collaboration, within the workplace is with Microsoft Teams. It’s easy to move all eligible tasks to this platform so that your teams can have a cloud-based workspace everyone can access.
In fact, Microsoft Teams can be used for various activities from employee onboarding to project management to running meetings with remote teams to creating workflows for production, communication, and collaboration. In fact, free training can be found here. Moreover, you can foster business and personal development by offering virtual courses via the Microsoft Teams platform which can be accessed anytime and anywhere. Remember these final steps:
- Focus on growth before goals.
- Focusing on how you can get better each day.
- Try not to worry about your BHAG *Big Hairy Audacious Goals”
Don’t forget to continue monitoring your progress. Give yourself a way to look at the big picture so that you may see how far you’ve come. You may have already achieved half of your goal without realizing it.
Final thought
Naturally, your business and personal development is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Nonetheless, you still have to set goals and adhere to them. Microsoft Teams offers the most user-friendly platform for working on both soft and hard skills with customizable and accessible education tools. Then, when you align your development goals with your organization’s objectives, your role takes on even more meaning.
Are you meeting your business goals? Do you have the right processes and systems in place? Is your business growing or is it stagnant? Is your network secure? Whatever goal you are looking to achieve please don’t hesitate to reach out. Please make use of the training materials above and get in contact with us so that we can review your IT Network. You can call us at 201-402-1900 or email us at info@krsit.com.