Tag: discovery

Looking back and forward 2014/2015

In 2015 I’m going to investigate more about….

  1. Communication design principles. Colour, layout, design, writing style, advertising and connection through visual media – I have to know more! I think there is a real gap in the skill set of HR practitioners in this space. Knowing how to craft communications with excellence beyond a boring poster format and policy speak, I think is the most important skill I will continue to learn this year.
  2. Performance Review Cycle Success – that old chestnut. Generally the feel is that people hate completing them, managers hate running them, the administration is a headache and most models don’t scale well.. there has to be a better way.
  3. Photography. This connects with number 1, but I am going to become really good at taking my own photos to communicate my message and the message of projects I am working on.
  4. Mastering Personal Knowledge Management. I think I have a handle on these principles but I want to get really clear on what this means and looks like in practice, then see where I can take it at work and play.
  5. How to find where top performers come from and what (if any) similarities there are between them. I want to go beyond just identifying top recruitment strategies and training and development pipelines. I want to look at top performers and see what they are made off and what similarities there are between them. Maybe it will be a simple finding, maybe not. Either way I am excited for what knowing this information can bring .

In 2014 I learned…

  1. If you haven’t clearly articulated your Vision, Mission and Values the going will get tough. This applies to work and play, if you can’t articulate what you are about, getting stuff done right will be a challenge. I watched the VMV being crafted for multiple businesses this year as well as the articulation of my own. You can’t make the decisions you need to and it’s difficult to make a bold and courageous move without knowing what they are either.
  2. The power of Vision, Mission, Values and “Getting It”. This year I heard the statement “getting it” become part of how we describe performance. People getting it, not getting it for example “they are technically excellent but they just don’t get it”. Getting it is about someone’s ability to really hook into and feel the vision, mission and values of a business and design their ideas and the way they work to fit into that model. Those that Get It are your future leaders, the ones that you will inspire and will continue to inspire you.
  3. Being resilient ensures growth and success. Keeping your cool in tough situations, managing set backs, being told you can’t or that you are not good enough are constants in every part of your life. If you are able to keep going in the face of danger, uncertainty and “haters” it will make you a force to be reckoned with.
  4. The job you do and the boss you work for will be equally as important. My experiences and the stories of others have highlighted this fact this year. Some people can tough out the agony of a great position and a terrible manager or vice versa – but I think fundamentally you will leave or become vey unhappy… sooner or later
  5. Intellectual and creative pursuits will make you better at your job. This year I went on my first overseas holiday and had a raft of other experiences that changed my priorities and energised me to think differently. I read more widely, watched movies not found at your local cinema, played with design principles and made a bigger effort to explore the world around me. Indeed this (I think) has made me better at my job and better in life in general.

Happy New Year!

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Success is heartbreaking stuff

The pursuit of your dream will be heart breaking. Now I am not saying that the journey isn’t worth it, or that you should stop taking chances but you need to get that it’s going to be the best and the worst experience. Yes that’s it folks, success is what happens when you push through and you don’t let heart break get the better of you. If you want to be great at something you need to brace yourself to be shut down and booed off stage. Your resolve has to be so strong because there are going to be moments that you feel as if your dream is kicking you in the face. Actually your dream is kicking you in the face. If it was easy to live your dreams everyone would be doing it. Living your dream is for those who are prepared to work for it. success 24548

Now you might read that and think.. ahhh well that looks errr terrifying. But lets take a step back and remember that long lasting success is not overnight, it’s a series of actions each day that create something wonderful. As you progress you become more invested and you begin to take bigger and bigger risks. Sometimes you will jump from one big risk to another and other times it will be slow going.

Success is like fighting gravity. You will always have someone trying to hold you back telling you what you can’t do, that it’s too dangerous or it won’t work. But you don’t have to listen to those people, you can acknowledge that they exist and then go about doing your own thing. The pursuit of your dream will be swiggle, it will twist and turn, change and evolve as you do. In the pursuit of my own dreams I have cried, I’ve questioned what I am doing and I’ve sat alone with the fear that things might not get better. But I have also had amazing win’s in the face of what sometimes felt impossible, found new passions and been exposed to more opportunities than I could have imagined. I have learned about myself and found that the potential is limitless but you have to hold on to the vision and not just your current reality. Because that is what it means to be in pursuit of a dream.

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Your dreams are too wonderful to go to waste. Your dreams and your unwavering commitment is what will change the course of time. It won’t be easy but yes, it will be worth it!

In the words of kid president…

“…this is life people, you’ve got air coming through your nose, you’ve got a heart beat! That means it’s time to do something!”