Category Archives: personal vision plan

Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, yes for success

Innovation – value is the key

 

In its report New Concepts in Innovation – The Keys To Growing Australia the Business Council of Australia defined innovation as:

Innovation can be defined as the application of knowledge to create additional value and wealth. Innovation involves using knowledge to find new ways to create and bring about change for the better. This definition of innovation has implications for the types of activities within businesses that can be considered innovative.

First, innovation does not necessarily involve technology and technological knowledge. Successful innovation can involve the use of any type of knowledge, provided its application results in additional value and wealth.

Second, innovation is not invention. Innovation may not even require the creation of new knowledge – be it to the world or to the firm. What it does require is the inspired application of knowledge (old or new) to create additional value.

Yes For Success, Life balance, plan for personal success, Gary Ryan, Organisations That MatterWhat I like about this definition is that it makes innovation easier to understand. Value determines innovation. If you create something and it doesn’t hold value, then you haven’t innovated. In an earlier post Understanding Innovation I explained that innovation was as simple as taking something and adding it to something else. Providing the result creates value, then you have innovated. Your somethings can be anything. They can be something physical with another physical thing, such as wrapping paper and a brown paper bag that together created the Gift Bag.

They can be a concept such as portability which was added to music and you create the Sony Walkman. You can have selling white goods and providing people with access to finance for those goods and you create GE Money. You can have a passion for baseball and a desire for a large free wedding and you create a fully Sponsorship Public Wedding.

Given the Business Council of Australia advocates innovation as a critical skill for career success, take this concept and start testing the value that you create. You might just take your most successful live program and the desire to create a like-minded community and create the Yes For Success Platform!

Learn about the Yes For Success Platform here.

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented people to move Beyond Being Good.
Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, yes for success

Who’s in control of your development?

 

Handing over 100% control for your personal and professional development to your employer is flawed. In our current world it doesn’t work. Not any more.

Yet that is the place that many of you are in. You rely 100% on your employer to develop you.

According to Mark McCrindle you are likely to have at least three different employers over the next decade. The reasons will be varied but will include you deciding to shift jobs and/or your employer no longer requiring your services. This is the world we now live in. Jobs for life are a rarity. Just ask the folk at Shell, Ford and Target in Geelong in regional Victoria, and Ford in Broadmeadows in the Melbourne’s northern suburbs. Over the next two years more than 1,900 people will be losing their jobs, many of whom will have worked for those companies for decades.

plan for personal success, Gary Ryan, Organisations That Matter, Yes For SuccessImagine if you were one of those workers. In good faith you had trusted your employer to develop you. After all you were part of their ‘big family’.

When the economy tightened, what was one of the first budget items to get cut? Traditionally, the budget item is training and development. Let’s consider some logic.

The reason the budget is getting cut is because the company is earning less money through sales. Should that trend continue then people’s jobs will be cut at some point in the future. This isn’t rocket science! Yet, if you were one of the employees in these circumstances, the writing is on the wall – at some point in the future you will be looking for a new job. It is with some irony that it is under these circumstances when you, the employee needs to be developing yourself more than you ever have before. Yet, when you have handed 100% of the control of your development to your employer you are getting less. Does this seem like a good formula for security and success?

If you, the employee have handed 100% of control for your development to your employer, then you are facing a situation where your employability is going down, when you should be aiming to have it go up.

Some more logic. When you are a job seeker is it safer to be more employable or less employable? Not a hard question, is it!

“My organisation provides wonderful training and development Gary, this isn’t relevant to me!” you might say. I’m sorry, but this is relevant.

Treat the training and development that your organisation provides as a bonus. If they are a decent employer they will understand that it is in their interests to keep developing you. That said they’ll limit their development to what they think is good for you, not necessarily what is good for you, your talents and your future. I’m not suggesting that companies are bad for having this view. It is understandable and reflects how the world actually works. The important thing is that you need to understand how the system works and you need to be in control of your development.

My message is simple. Keep your development 100% in your control. Don’t hand that control to your employer. Use whatever development opportunities they give to develop your talents. Be the best employee that you can be. But don’t limit your development to what your employer provides. Do online courses, join Toastmasters (as an example if you need to improve your public speaking), do whatever you need to do to keep developing yourself.

Right at this moment what are you doing that indicates that you are in control of your development? Your security and future depend on it.

Learn about the Yes For Success Platform here.

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented people to move Beyond Being Good.
Ball of Light, Customer Service, Denis Smith, Employability, Employability Skills, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, OTM Service Strategy, Passion, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, Professionals, Service Excellence, Success, What Really Matters, yes for success

Passion and Success

 

Passion is the first principle that underpins the Yes For Success Platform. Several years ago Denis Smith held a high pressure sales job, was drinking too much and suffering from depression.

His life lacked passion despite all the trimmings of a successful sales career.

Published with permission

Fortunately he knew ‘something’ was missing from his life and he went on a search to discover his passion. He quickly found photography and realised that he was somewhat of a natural with the camera. Upon uploading his photos to sites he discovered that his ‘good’ photos were the same as everyone else’s. But he didn’t want to be the same as everyone else.

So his evolving passion took him on a journey of discovery where he came across the concept of ‘light drawings’ through photography. With passion comes innovation and he decided to ‘play’ with the concept, creating surreal ‘Ball of Light‘ images in his photographs.

Today Denis has turned his passion into a business. More importantly he is living a life full of positivity and energy. View this short video to learn more about Denis’ story.

Personally I feel energised when I hear about stories such as Denis’ and I thank my good friend Andrew Scott (an amateur photographer himself and a friend of Denis’) for sharing the story with me.

How present is passion in your life?

Learn about the Yes For Success Platform here.

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented people to move Beyond Being Good.