Improvement: The Career Development A to Z

In this episode we look into Improvement. One of the most important parts in life in general as well as career. Have you set any improvement goals lately?

#improvement #coaching #career #motivation

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening wherever you are, and welcome back to the latest episode of the Micah channels. And of course, thank you for your time uh and attention. As usual, i I think I said that before, didn't I? Oh dear. Alright. Also, if the content does like your boat and you haven't done that, like your boat. Oh god. Of course, if the content does float your boat, please remember to like, subscribe, press the notification bell, tell your friends, fam, friends, friends, friends. I don't know who he is. Friends, actually. No, he doesn't live here anymore. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening wherever you are, and welcome to the latest edition of the My Coach Ben podcast. Thanks for stopping by. Your time and attention is greatly appreciated. As usual, please remember to like, subscribe, press the notification bell if you haven't done already, and remember to tell your friends and fam and let's spread the word. I would like to extend a warm welcome to the new followers and subscribers on the various social media channels. So thank you very much for that. And before we start, we are now, of course, um in the month of May. Um, and April, as we know, was testicular cancer awareness month. So I hope that uh the male um viewers have um checked themselves and made appointments to go and see a urologist if you haven't, or if something has come up in the best sense, if you know what I mean, um then you know hopefully all is well. And for the ladies, I hope you've been able to convince the men who up to now haven't done that. So um let's hope we've done um a good turn for ourselves there. And of course, because we're in May, it doesn't mean that the topic is over. This is something that is continuing on a daily basis for uh the rest of our lives as we know it. Let's uh let's put it that way if we want to be uh be practical about it. Without further ado, let's get into it. And following on from last week's topic, which was honesty, of course, we will move on to the next letter, which is I, and the topic for I for this week will be improvement. And as per the usual format, let's begin with a definition. And if we look at the Oxford English Dictionary, we'll see that improvement is defined as a thing that makes something better or is better than something else. Home improvements, or it's an improvement on the last cake I made, or I could say, I hope this is an improvement on the last podcast I made, whichever way. So um, improvement, what can we take from that? When improvement we could say progress also works in terms of uh improvement, and this is uh to say that um by way of progress we are not in the same uh position in terms of let's say quality and ability, certainly podcast-wise, let's say, as uh I was or we were two years ago from now. So hopefully we have improved in that time. Um, secondly, development and development, as we know, is the ongoing process of improvement, generally meant in a positive sense. You can have negative developments, but let's not focus on that. Um, the positive development of things, and this is yes, to use the the podcast analogy again, it's about developing the skill and the ability and the process going forward. So there are various bits of development that I've done, I guess, which would include things like working on not saying so many ums and ahs, which I've not been that successful at, or um other things such as making sure that the lighting and everything is is all set up properly. So these are areas of development, and another thing, I guess, is a culture. Culture can also mean improvement, a culture of improvement, which we'll come on to a little bit later. Um, in terms of an example, the company I work for, we have uh something which is called operational excellence. Um, I believe that Porsche and many other companies have something called lean management, which is exactly the same, and there is a qualification which is called uh Sixth Sigma, I believe. And this is something where you have various belts and you end up at some point at a black belt. Um, this is not to say that you're going to be um you know using any self-defense, of course. Um, but this is just the different stages of being able to implement projects for self uh for self for process improvement, uh let's get it right, for process improvement. And this is something I'm a huge fan of. Um, I've seen in a a lot of companies over the years, and even the company I'm at now, where things have been in place for a long time simply because they have, not because they're actually more um they're more current or they serve the purpose anymore, but simply because that's just the way things have been done. And when you try to have something like operational excellence, then you at least try to make sure that the processes are improved, and in that way you can demonstrate that things can be done a lot better or easier, maybe faster than they were in the past. It's not always about speed, sometimes it's just about getting things done more accurately as well. Again, another method of improvement. So that's the what. If we look at the how, so how else can we um have improvement or how can we make improvements? I would say the first thing is that you need to have a process of review, and when I say review, what I mean is that whether it's in your professional or personal life, you need to review things now and again, and review can also mean reflection, and that is also the same as review. So, on a personal or professional level, this is where you may sit down with yourself and or somebody else and just have a look at how things have gone or been done up to now and how they can be improved. Um, on a personal level, this could be let's say if you're somebody like myself who may be pushed for time, sometimes it's about organizing yourself, and sometimes a period of reflection can help when you think about or you review how you've done things up to now and what you can do in order to improve things somewhat, and of course, in a professional manner, a review can be how you go about uh writing emails, for example. Do you want to continue doing them from your own head as it were, or do you want to employ the use of a chat GPT or a co-pilot if you're using a Microsoft Office, um, these kind of things? So, just a continual um continual review is always good to help. And moving on from that, once we have reviewed or we've reflected, what do you need? A plan. And a plan is going to be how you're going to move from the current situation to the intended state or the intended um, yeah, the intended vision, let's say how it's going to look like. And we all need a plan. We all need uh once we've identified what needs to be done, you need to have a plan in order that you can set yourself some small goals and be able to measure how you're doing insofar as reaching the um the promised land or state that you want to that you want to get to, and excuse the uh the shaking of the uh of the camera there, unfortunately. This is due to my woodwork platform not being quite as level as I'd have hoped. So, yes, there you go. Um, an area of improvement there why I say so. Um, and moving on from that, I've just mentioned as well we need a a method of measurement. And measurement, of course, is going to be how you measure, how you determine what improvement you've made from now until your intended uh your intended ideal. So whether that's going to be today, tomorrow, next week, next month, how are you going to measure that to make sure that your improvements are coming along and taking shape as you expect them to be? So, for example, we can say a coaching program. Coaching is a very good way to instill a mindset of improvement, it's a good way to implement a program of improvement, let's say, or a plan of improvement. And this, of course, is something that many people employ in order to improve their career status, maybe something in their personal lives as well. Coaching is very good for that, in terms of posing questions and getting you to think about methods and means by which you can improve, and these are things that we can all benefit from. So, to summarize, improvement. So, we've looked at the definition, which is a thing that makes something better or is better than something else, or what it was before, and we had a couple of examples: home improvements, and of course, the improvement of against the last cake or the last podcast, whichever way you want to uh you want to look at that. And we've looked at other ways in which we could define improvement by terms of progress, let's say, the progress you've made in order to not be in the same place that you were now as you were as at a previous point in time, or vice versa. Development again, this is another method of method of uh improvement and making sure that processes and maybe your own behaviors, whatever you want to uh to concentrate on, actually improves over a period of time in whichever kind of means this is going to be, and also a culture, a culture of improvement. This is also going to help. And there we spoke briefly about operational excellence, Six Sigma, lean management, these kind of um these kind of processes or these kind of approaches where you look at the roles, responsibilities, and processes within an organization works for yourself on a personal level as well, and how these can be improved and bettered over a given period of time. And the how the how of course we looked at to review or reflection, and this is going to be how we can just take some time to look back at what we're doing currently or maybe in the past, and how we can improve it going forward. So, whether this is going to be on a personal or professional level, um, it's pretty much the same the same principle, and of course, once we've done that, we need to have a plan. How are we going to move from A to B? The improvement that we're looking for, we need to have a plan, and with all plans, you need to be able to measure it. So, this is the next point we made. And the example, of course, was uh a coaching program, someone like my good self, of course, or someone else who is able to work with you or with your team or organization in order to help you implement ideas for improvement on a personal as well, personal level as well. So that pretty much wraps it up there. I would say improvement. I'll be interested to hear what methods or ideas you have as well in terms of improvement. Please put uh a comment down below in the comments, or you can leave a note somewhere or send an email. There are many means to contact, and um, yes, let's uh let's have a have a discussion about this improvement. It's a um a very interesting topic, and something where most people I would say have some kind of idea or some wish in order to improve one certain aspect of their lives or their careers. So I'm gonna wrap it up there. Thank you very much for your time and attention, it's been greatly appreciated. And if you haven't done, please do subscribe, press the notification bell, and give us a like. This helps the channel immensely, and uh, please do spread the word, it will be uh hugely, hugely appreciated. And um, you never know, you could help someone out big time, or we could help someone out big time. So, thanks for that. And on that note, it's only left for me to wish you a good week ahead. This is being recorded on the bank holiday and Monday, so I hope you're having a good one, or you've had a good one by the time this comes to air. And look after yourselves and one another, and until the next time, peace.