Brain food, anyone?
Friday, May 30th, 2008
There are three types of appetites for professional growth in the business world; the forever hungry, the binge eaters and the starved.
The forever hungry are always growing. The binge eaters grow only when they absolutely have to. And the starved are emaciated, barely functional, if not already dead, professionally, that is.
Those in the latter group are not only professionally deceased, but they are dead weight to a company. It’s not even that they don’t pull their own load, they actually hold the entire organization back.
These starving masses have no thirst for professional growth, never nourishing their minds. They know what they know. They aren’t interested in improvement. They spend an inordinate amount of energy trying to keep an ever-changing world from evolving, so they can maintain some semblance of relevance. Their careers, of course, don’t go anywhere fast and they complain about everyone passing them by. I kinda find it hard to feel sorry for these people.
At the other end of the spectrum, the forever hungry group are the leaders. They don’t just survive, they thrive. Oh, they hit bumps in the professional road occasionally, but their perpetual momentum carries them through it.
From a creative vitality standpoint the ever-hungry peeps know what they don’t know and they are always looking to fill that void. They are the risk takers. They fail more than average people, but, hey, in business where does average get you?
So what about the middle group? The binge feeders. Those who grow only when it’s truly necessary? Where do they fit into this professional growth food chain, as it were? If you’re at this site you are likely in the leader group and are probably quite interested in how to move these middle-of-the-appetite-road types to the fast lane of the professional growth feast. (more…)
