Friday, November 17, 2006

The Mastery Challenge

As someone who primarily works with people, I’ve come to the realization that when teaching someone else, it’s not only your level of commitment that counts, not even the material or methodology used. Though some positive results may be reached along the learning process, there’s a “one step further stuff” that demands a higher level of excellence. That is true in all professional fields, for both companies and individuals as well.

Julie A. Sokol and Robert J. Thomas from Accenture, state that

Any high performer will tell you that mastery means more than being merely good or competent.
This is just as true in business as in golf or music or chess. Competence certainly is required to enter and then stay in the game. But mastery— the goal to strive for once a company (or an individual) has achieved competence in a given function or process—is what distinguishes the high performer.

No company achieves mastery in all areas of its business, of course; nor should it aim to, especially because basic competence in most areas often is sufficient. But mastery in strategically important business functions makes it possible for a company to consistently outperform its competitors over time—across business cycles, industry disruptions and changes in CEO leadership. Masters frequently are innovators too: They execute reliably and tend to be resolute in their conviction that advancing the state of the art will provide a sustainable competitive advantage”.

Interesting insights. Let’s explore this issue along our next lessons. Please note some key words here, such as competence, reliably, state of the art, etc.

Daniel

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The bad thing is that we lose so much time of our lives to achieve mastery and we just get what an average person get: headache, worry and more work.

Perhaps we should change our view and try to achieve mastery in happiness!

Cheers!

Daniel de Aguirres said...

don't take it that serious, boy!