Knowing Where to Source Insights as a Professional

Career Success is largely hinged on your ability to create value, solve problems and deliver results for your organization. Your professional influence expands as you impact your industry with insights that can shape the future of your profession.

The key ingredients for success work together and will not produce results in isolation. These ingredients revolve around the competence of the professional and the meaning that can be drawn from available data.

The worth of your competence as a professional is expressed as follows:

1. Credentials. What certifications and academic qualifications do you have to validate your ability? It is not enough to verbalise your ability to do a certain task, your must get some authority in the field to validate you. The key levers about the influence your credentials will have on your professional are quality and relevance. The quality of your credential is determined by two major factors - your grade and the awarding institution. The relevance of your credential is determined by its contributory power to the business' pursuits.
2. Attributes. What personal qualities do you possess that can aid your work? There are roles that you cannot occupy because you do not possess the personality that matches the demand of such office. The focus areas for your attributes are fit and alignment. Talking about being fit, you have got to possess attributes suitable for the role. Your alignment is chiefly about how your personal qualities will support the realisation of business pursuits.
3. Skills. What technical, conceptual, and interpersonal skills do you possess? These three broad areas of your skills focus on technical prowess - your ability to do an exact work in your field of endeavour, conceptual skill - the quality of your mental ability to convert abstract things into concrete forms, and interpersonal relations - your ability to get along with people and work with them to produce results. The distinguishing factor here is proficiency. This refers to the extent of your expertise. You must be able to show progress and development across those three broad areas.
4. Knowledge. What information do you possess? To be considered valuable to the organization, you must demonstrate sufficient knowledge of four key things namely, your job, the organization your work for or desire to work for, the industry where the organization is anchored, and the business operating environment. Your knowledge in these four areas must be marked by currency - relating to the present day and usefulness - able to be used to produce results.
5. Experience. What are your antecedents? What things have you been a part of that can add value to the business? The key focus here is usefulness. Your experience must be advantageous to the organization. It must be valuable to the end that the business can lean on it to achieve her goals.

Source of Insights

How then do you make meaning from all the elements of your competence? Where is the source of complementing information that will make you a worthy asset to your profession?

I have attempted to outline a few here for your consideration.

1. Learnings. One source of insight for professional success is your experience. Look to the activities, tasks, and projects that you have been a part of because they constitute a rich source of understanding required to handle your current obligations. This is why it becomes important for every professional to truly get their hands muddied in work. You cannot stand aloof and expect to draw experience. It is only those that get involved in things today that ultimately solve future problems. You must document your learnings from every activity you participate in. These become reservoirs to draw from when you find yourself in other situations.
2. Regulations. Another major source of insight you need to draw on to succeed in your career is regulation. Regulations are enacted by authorities. Every professional is subject to a minimum of three authorities - current employer through corporate policies, professional association through the code of conduct guidelines protecting the profession, and government through laws, acts, and regulatory guidelines. Ignorance of these regulations puts you at a disadvantage in performance.
3. Study. As a professional, you must consciously raise your awareness through programmed investigations. You won't know much if you don't conduct research into the things happening around you. As an individual, study the lives of your role models, chances are that you will find approaches and techniques that will aid the delivery of your work. Take time to study biographies, they are rich source of vocabularies that help you overcome incredible odds in life. Pay attention to the ways and practices of the market leaders in your industry. Go into journals and trade publications to get the latest about market trends and activities. Once you make this a culture, you cannot be ignorant in your field and this places you in a good position to be a rallying point for solutions.
4. Work. Another source of insight required for professional excellence is activity. The tasks you do reveal things about you, your work, your industry and the impact you are having on society. Working enables you to know what you are capable of doing. It reveals those you can work with and the extent of results you all can produce together. Many of us will never know what we are capable of producing until we get involved in the work that delivers results. Work influences our judgement. It is a source of imagination that we can leverage on to become value adding personalities.
5. Goals. If you see goals as instructions, you will realise the power of insight that it bears. Goals will do five things for you. First, goals will reveal what you are good at. Many of us will never what we are capable of doing until we are subjected to the demands of our goals. Secondly, goals will reveal opportunities around you. If you painstakingly seek to achieve your goals, you will find opportunities to grow. Thirdly, committing yourself to goals and goal-setting helps with defining things you are available for. Fourthly, your goals betray your affection by helping you to discover what you love. Finally, your goals help to unravel the limits you can go as it reveals what you can sacrifice to achieve your aim.
6. Association. If you value insights, you will value relationships. Your association helps you to connect to the strengths within your network. You have often heard that your network is your net-worth. We will never know what we have to do a great job until we ask those we know. The quality of your relationships helps you to maximise your strength and reduce the effect of your weaknesses on your tasks. Many people suffer on their career journey because they don't have an understanding of what their network can offer. Discoveries are only responses to inquiries. Your network is a rich fountain of insights that guarantees success in your professional life. Your association contains examples that you can follow and learn from. The people you relate with leave you with clues and cues for your own journey.
7. Outcomes. Results are indicators of the quality of processes engaged. The outcomes from the commitment of your time, energy, and resources will always be an abundant pool of insight for your professional life. Your results validate your techniques and strategies. This validation is the anchor for the insights you need to improve on your results and set new targets.

Final Word

You have no reason to be stranded on your journey to professional significance. Explore these suggestions and see yourself become a rallying point for solutions.

OAO