Learn and let learn
Today I have a short but essential message for you. It’s about the value of experience, the sum of your learnings. Of course, since my articles is mainly directed at IT, I refer to developer teams. But the following message is transferable to every type of team in every profession.
What do you need in the long run to succeed in the software development business? Of course, a good business model, sales, and marketing. But all these things are meaningless if you cannot deliver because the team lacks an essential foundation. In my opinion, you need to focus on the following:
Mindset
Every one of us has a current sum of experiences. We can do specific things well, but we know we need to improve ourselves in the future. Everyone knows that, but not all of us want to take the first step since we naturally resisting to change. We need to overcome this resistance.
The very foundation of becoming good in something is the right mindset. You need to believe in yourself and your vision of yourself in the future. The right belief is necessary to overcome resistance and keep pushing, even if it seems that every force of nature is against you.
Cultivate that mindset daily with the appropriate input, like good books, podcasts, documentaries, or conversations with people who motivate you to push forward and overcome resistance. Finally, visualize yourself in the future; remember what you can become and what it takes to get there.
But never surround yourself with people trying to keep you from getting better. Because your mindset is heavily influenced by the input you consume and the company of people you are in.
A positive mindset is what gets you up every day to push forward. Cultivate and feed that every day; it will determine if you can achieve your goals or not.
Skillset
To create new things, you need skills. These skills are acquired simply by repeating the process of learning, training, and doing. It’s interesting to note that stress puts us into a state of adaptation, which is part of human evolution. In this state, we are subconsciously focused on finding a solution to a problem. This might have been to get rid of a sabertooth next to your hut in the stone age. In modern days it can be to meet a deadline for a project. However, we are awake and can adapt quickly to such a situation to learn how to find a solution.
Having a mindset of learning is crucial since learning never ends, and there is not always a sabertooth available that motivates you to overcome your resistance. You need to become a learner without a stressful situation; for this, you need positive motivation, essentially a positive mindset. It will work as effectively as stress, but it’s definitely healthier.
There are always new things to learn or areas we need to improve. In addition, the world is changing faster than ever before. To keep up, we need to learn constantly; if we want to be successful in the long run, we need to become eternal learners.
Culture of learning and progression
Mindset and skillset are dedicated to a single person. However, to get successful as a group, you need to work in a team, and this team should share the same mentality with a common mindset. Everyone in a team needs to be able to identify mostly with this overarching mindset.
If some in a team are eternal learners and some just sit on their hands pretending to be happy with the current state, the team will eventually fail to progress; It may even fall apart because such a combination is toxic in the long run. In addition, there will be movements in different directions, which causes friction between team members and will slow down the progress of the outcome.
Make sure an open-minded culture of learning can thrive early on. It’s hard to create something later on. Avoid having repelling attitudes in the same team. In the end, no one will be happy with that.
Conclusion for me
I wrote that because this topic is a significant one for me. I learned it the hard way and experienced the bad outcome of it firsthand. I experienced how repelling it can be if people want to hold you back or try to play so safe that you feel locked up; while you cannot make any progress anymore. This eventually led to one of the most significant decisions in my business life.
For some years now, I would describe myself as an eternal learner. Therefore, gathering new experiences or knowledge became very important for me. I read a lot and listen to podcasts with profound value. I write myself to manifest what I’ve recorded in my head and to share it with others.
Most importantly, I implement my learnings into my daily work. Starting from spreading learnings to colleagues, implementing new techniques, and changing entire workflows.
Changing and tweaking often is a sign of progression. Progression is possible because of our mindset, skillset, and team culture that appreciates change and progress.
Hope you can take something from it.
