Ever experience a bout of professional uncertainty? When your expertise is challenged, or competitors get the better of you? Uncomfortable, isn’t it?
It’s one thing to experience awkward or uncomfortable moments. However, when you begin to doubt that you know what you actually know, there’s a problem. Because that single episode of professional uncertainty, once multiplied, eventually becomes the first thought on your mind each morning.
That is when you focus on Risk, rather than Opportunity.
And that is when you get good and stuck. You hold yourself back from becoming better and better each day. As a result, you thwart your professional growth. In addition, the quality and value of your professional outcomes are far less valuable than they could be. And should be.
Why not wonder: “How will what I learn and do today, on behalf of clients and colleagues, create better and better outcomes?”
That is the point when you stop holding yourself back from moving forward. Why? Because you confidently address the uncertainty that each day presents to you. And – instead of as a risk – you view each day as an opportunity to become better and better on behalf of current and future clients.
Otherwise, you keep doing the same things, the same way. And creating better and better outcomes are not achieved when professional uncertainty makes you view everything as a risk.
Professional innovation mindset anticipates client expectations.
After all, clients expect their experience of your products and services to become better and better over the duration of their relationship with your organization. They don’t ever anticipate a solution that is only as good as the last one.
When products and services become better and better, they don’t do so on their own. After all, there are more than a few people behind those better and better innovations. And one of those critical-to-quality outcomes people is You.
Instead of floundering in professional uncertainty, target professional innovation.
Regardless of your professional discipline, are you certain you are doing everything you can to make yourself better and better each day? Or are you merely as good as the day you graduated from school or began your current job?
I suspect not. Rather, somewhere along the line, you become curious. Then, you define Opportunities and take them, in spite of risk and uncertainty.
Ultimately, professional innovation leverages your own investment in yourself. Because when you believe in your own self-worth, your professional outcomes showcase your professional certainty.
Professional certainty embraces Risk to achieve Opportunity.
When you adopt professional innovation mindset, you leverage professional certainty in your skillsets and mindset. You:
- Become responsible for acquiring the processes and self-discipline that make you a key contributor to value creation in your organization; and
- Hold yourself accountable to yourself for becoming professionally certain, instead of remaining in the haze of professional uncertainty.
Reframe yourself within professional certainty.
After all, the context of professional relationships and decision-making changes daily. Ambiguity and uncertainty are aspects of being a professional that you can count on, each and every day.
So, why continue to sabotage your own forward, professional progress with professional uncertainty?
What will it take to move you one millimeter beyond your current comfort level? Why remain professionally uncertain when you can become professionally certain, and more innovative, as well?
Next steps towards professional innovation:
- Read these related posts on professional innovation, workforce engagement and customer retention.
- Has what you read today started you thinking about tomorrow? Contact me and let’s discuss.
- Subscribe to my blog. Share your email address in the red box in the right column. Never miss another insightful post.
Babette Ten Haken serves organizations as a corporate catalyst and innovative speaker, strategist, coach and storyteller. Babette’s One Millimeter Mindset™ Workshops and Speaking programs leverage collaboration to catalyze professional innovation, workforce engagement and customer retention, especially in challenging Industrial Internet of Things environments. Babette’s playbook of IIoT team collaboration hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon. She is a member of SME, ASQ, SHRM and the National Speakers Association.
Image source: iStock
Leave a Reply