The seed for professional innovation mindset is planted when you feel trapped or limited by your current professional environment. You realize you cannot move forward, professionally, because something or someone is holding you back. The majority of the time, that “something or someone” just happens to be you.
You know it. I know it, because I have been there, too.
You just get to the point where you are no longer comfortable with or complacent about going with the flow. You fell asleep last night and everything was just swell. Then, you woke up this morning and realized: “Today’s the day I need to change things up for the better.”
How did that happen to you?
However, over the past few months or so, you have had a nagging feeling that gradually made you increasingly professionally uncomfortable. You had a growing suspicion that the way you were trained is no longer compatible with the environments in which businesses compete in today’s digitally transforming ecosystem.
When you realize you are out of sync with the pace and cadence of today’s business environment, professional innovation mindset starts to blossom.
Yes, you can be at the top of your game in your respective discipline. Of course, you know all the answers. However, those answers just may be to yesterday’s questions. How will you solve today’s and tomorrow’s problems by limiting yourself to yesterday’s solutions?
Furthermore, as you read and learn about new ideas and concepts, the greater your perceived deficit in terms of professional skill sets and competencies. More importantly, how you think about these new ideas and process information to solve problems now seems stale to you. Also, you realize that the most optimal solutions result from collaborating with other people, rather than continuing to sell or engineer as a solo act.
The bad news is that it is impossible to keep up with all the information published and pushed out towards you. The good news is that you are continuously open to learning new information. Even information that may not mesh with your values, perspective or current skill sets. You are open to change.
Then you start to look around your current workplace. That is when you realize that no one else there feels quite the same way that you do, because they were not hired for Change. Instead, they were hired for homogeniety.
So, while you feel like you are having a professional breakthrough, coworkers begin to look at you as though you have two heads. (Well, do you?) While you are open to change, perhaps you are not working in an organizational culture which is open to change.
Become comfortable being uncomfortable as you pursue your professional innovation mindset.
Professionally, you realize you are out of sync with the skill sets and mindset required to attain competence, clarity and confidence for where You Need to be Going. That is a huge professional epiphany, isn’t it?
Are you open to Change with a capital “C”? Yes, adopting Professional Innovation Mindset as your operating system is a Big Idea. In fact, it takes a professional leap of faith to move away from remaining comfortable, confident and perhaps more than a bit complacent about Where You Are Today. Instead, you evolve towards becoming Confident and Continuously Innovative for Tomorrow and the Future.
However, once you have this professional epiphany, there’s no turning back, is there? You can’t get the idea out of your head, can you?
Here are three articles to help catalyze professional innovation mindset. After you read them, would you like to start a conversation about where to go next? If so, click on this link to get started.
It’s about Your Professional Why, not Your What.
Is Your Professional Word also Your Bond?
Practice Relentless Curiosity for Professional Development Success.
Babette Ten Haken is a corporate catalyst and innovative speaker. She serves organizations as a strategist, coach and storyteller. Babette’s One Millimeter Mindset™ Workshops and Speaking programs leverage collaboration to catalyze professional innovation, workforce engagement and customer success for customer retention. Babette’s playbook of technical / non-technical collaboration hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.
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