Mastery - Blessing or Curse

Becoming a Master,?- a blessing or a curse

In today’s environment, the days of single disciplines and vertical organisations is diminishing and the organisations that will succeed will be those with connected competencies, interconnected capabilities and the systems to make fast decisions and maintain agility.?However, I do wonder in a world of quick fix solutions and performance indicators if we are really embedding those connected and interconnected skills that we need for the future.

Part of the problem is that we have reduced some of the standards or order to satisfy our requirements against performance measures,?the depth is reducing due to the vast amounts of information and the grazing nature of learning and finally we want more spare time, more leisure time, so underpinning those competencies is much harder.?Am I wrong? just putting it out there to see what the general thoughts are.

When I was younger, I decided to start a martial art and it takes 25 years of 10 hours per week to become a 5th degree Master, but I embarked on the journey, training, practicing, studying, researching and teaching over that period to become a ‘Master’.?Although the journey getting there was tough with many challenges, through commitment, persistence, practicing on the plateau, patience, inquisitiveness, late nights every week and always wanting to improve further I finally made it.?A Master is not a jack all or trades or a master on none or even a master of just one.?A master has to be a master of all trades providing both connected competencies and interconnected capabilities.?This is a blessing with an ability to do ?many things yourself and help others on the journey is truly special.?The problem is to remain a Master can be a bit of a curse as the training, practice, study and teaching exponentially increases so and to maintain peak performance is not an easy task and takes even more commitment, but if done with passion has huge upsides.

In my work environment I trained as a Mechanical engineering,?a Chemical Engineer, a Reservoir Engineer, a Project engineer, a Risk engineer as well as a couple of executive management training programs. I have been very lucky in having people who believed in me and gave me the opportunity to have both connected competencies and interconnected capabilities.?The blessing is that I can work across organisations and disciplines and work on exciting developments.?The curse is that all this comes at a cost of focussing attention on the work and education environment and to keep up the expertise requires constant research, practice and study.?When I look at CPD and the need to do several hours per year, I wonder is it enough? and are employers really maximising the capital of their workforce.?Just imagine how much more performance we could achieve if we allowed 10% of our workforce per week to work on improving the competencies and capabilities.?

It is like the old story of the two foresters. Forester one started at 08.00 and was working really hard, sweating, missing his break and trying to cut down a 100 trees per day.?He managed 95 and went home at 17.30 tired and no energy for anything else.?Forester two arrive at 08.00 had a cup of tea, put some nice music on and started to sharpen his saw.?He started cutting trees at 09.00, had a good lunch break and finished early at 16.30 cutting down 105 trees.?He went home happy and ready for his leisure activities.

By understanding a wider perspective takes a lot of hard work, patience, commitment, persistence and inquisitiveness,?once we understand then application becomes so much more easier and this leaves time for better wisdom.?It is the wisdom that makes us more successful, but is both blessing for the successes we achieve and a curse for the amount of effort we need to continue to make.

The question is - are you up for being a Master, as we need more masters to tackle the challenges of the future.?The apprenticeship or degree is just the starting point, it is how we build on it, that counts.

We need development programs that

1.???????Develops the right levels of Knowledge.

2.??????More importantly we need to know the connections and interconnections to greatly improve our understanding.

3.??????We need time to practice our application, learning from mistakes and gradually improve our practical abilities.

4.??????If we continue to develop and stretch our wings then wisdom can be achieved and better decisions about our future can be made.

There is a 95% correlation on the decisions we make this year and the performance we have in the next 3 years so can you take the risk of not sharpening the saw?