10 tips to reinvent yourself and grow professionally

“Words are concrete plans to make our dreams come true. We depend on the words we choose and shelter in our hearts to invent and create the future, because in them we have installed the way we see the world.”

Luis Castellanos – PhD in Philosophy and Researcher

Our words, as explained by Luis Castellanos, in his book “Educating in Positive Language”, can be our worst enemy or our best ally and have a unique power to transform our lives.

This is precisely the starting point of today’s reflection. If words have great importance in the functioning of our lives and the type of words we use daily to communicate with our environment, it depends a lot on the way we build our own reality, we cannot address the new post-pandemic reality, with the same words; hierarchy, power, authority, command, opacity, control, planning, certainties, scarcity, etc. that we have used so far to Design our professional future.

Like it or not, the world is changing, and you need to change the old words that built your current reality, that only made sense in the past and that emerged to solve problems that are no longer relevant in a connected and accelerating world.

The Power of Words

In times of uncertainty, deciding what we are going to devote our attention to and the scarce resources we have is crucial. The word we use to decide will mark whether this year will be a year where we dedicate ourselves merely to survive or if it will be a year of profound changes in ourselves and in our lives. The alternatives are basically two: the exploitation of old certainties or the exploration of new opportunities.

When we build from an exploitative language we usually see the future as a reality external to us, in front of which we have to take a position and to do so we try to predict it to plan it. And from here, we set the concrete objectives we want to achieve, draw up a plan and manipulate the current reality to achieve predetermined objectives. This is what we have been taught since childhood in schools, so we can say that it is our natural way of approaching problems. It is based on the premise that to the extent that we can predict the future, we can control it. This language, analytical or causal, of constructing our reality is particularly useful when the future is reasonably predictable, our environment is stable and we are clear about the objectives we want to achieve.

In contrast, when we use a language of exploration to design our future, we start from a different premise: we are the ones who create our own future. This is the natural way to act in entrepreneurs and innovators. The entrepreneurial logic is particularly useful in complex and uncertain moments such as the current ones, since it moves us directly to action, to stop feeling victims of circumstances and encourage us to become true protagonists of our lives, convinced that to the extent that we are the ones who create our own future, we do not need to predict it to control it.

Language belongs to us, identifies us, is a faithful reflection of what we are. It is not about enriching ourselves with a brilliant word, it is about enriching our lives forever by choosing the course and path of our inhabited words. It is about moving from managing the known to exploring the unknown; We don’t know the unknown because we can’t see it, we don’t have the tools to see it, or we simply don’t want to see it. It is about becoming true protagonists of our future, living aware that we are a “permanent beta” of an unfinished project, under permanent construction, which will need subsequent revisions to develop its maximum potential.

Words to care

This is the time to build on our experiences of the pandemic, take advantage of the learnings of this period and increase our resilience to live with the new reality and redesign our professional future.

Words, as Luis Castellanos teaches us, are concrete plans to make our dreams come true. Let’s imagine our professional future based on these ten words chosen to reinvent ourselves in our individuality, as unique and unrepeatable people. We depend on the words we choose and shelter in our hearts to invent and create the future, because in them we have installed the way we see the world. Behind each of these 10 words are hidden 10 tips to reinvent yourself and grow professionally to become active protagonists of our future. A future that we cannot plan, but we can devote all our energies to building it.

10 Tips to grow and reinvent yourself professionally

1. Dream.

Dream big. You urgently need a change of perspective, the future is better than you think. Digitalization and the exponential advance of technologies mean that the production of products and services have a zero marginal cost and lead us to an economy of abundance. These converging forces make it possible to solve the world’s most pressing concerns: water, food, climate, energy, overpopulation, education and health sooner than you can imagine.

We need at the social level new decision criteria that integrate ecology, economy and equity from a perspective of abundance rather than one of scarcity and limitations. On a personal level, our words reflect our collective perceptions. From our immersion in abundance comes confidence, positive thinking and habits of abundance: “More for you is more for both of you”, sharing always creates value.

2. Explore.

We are in a moment of profound transformation. We are moving from a linear and predictable society, based on logic, to a society of the unpredictable, with a new way of thinking and a new approach to life. That is why it is necessary that you dedicate a part of your time to observe reality and find the trends that in the near future will affect your life, your profession and your organization.

It is not much use asking “what happened?” when everything has already passed. So don’t stand still in the face of change. Look at what is happening around you and ask yourself: how does all this affect me personally, how will these changes affect my future employability? Make sure that your organization also asks the essential questions: how do these changes affect my customers?, what impact will they have on the competitiveness of my products and services?, How can we transform disruption into an opportunity to reinvent ourselves?

3. Connect.

Participate in the new reality. You will discover that it does not bite, and that it is not dangerous either. The central element in the Age of Collaboration is not access to information, but access to conversations and actively participate in them. It is these new conversations that will allow us to develop new capabilities as leaders; which will allow us to know the needs of our clients and find the new talent that our organizations require. By participating, you will get your capacity for synthesis to be strengthened against your capacity for analysis, and you will learn to detect general patterns above specific answers.

Use the speed of trust to move forward. Trust emerges when as leaders we are transparent, honest and keep our word. It’s that simple. In an uncertain, changing and accelerated world like the current one, the risk is not – as has traditionally been understood – in the trust we place in others, but in the absence of trust. And this is because an organization based on fear and control, on misgivings and supervision, is much less agile in adapting to changes than an organization based on a culture of trust; that is, based on the alignment of people, transparency, responsibility and reciprocity. Trust allows us to collaborate to innovate, provides us with the agility of execution we need to adapt to changes and, as a consequence of all the above, translates directly into the income statement.

4. Feel.

Do not try to decipher everything that is happening only in a rational key. Free your senses and connect with those around you. True transformation is an inside-out process, requiring emotional competence and empathy to understand how the people around you think, feel and act. Develop your empathy with others to better understand the subtleties of the changes taking place and the emotional beauty of human interaction. The ability to think logically is what makes us human. But logic alone is not enough. In addition to paying attention to tasks, we must pay attention to people.

This “ability to understand” makes other people get involved and give the best of themselves. This will be one of the keys in the future. This new era requires words, skills and talents that, historically, have not been part of our work environment, such as creativity, empathy, intuition and the ability to use ideas apparently unrelated to our field of expertise.

5. Question.

Be a management rebel. You don’t need to agree with everyone all the time. It challenges the status quo, questions the old ways of working that only made sense in the past and that emerged to solve problems that are no longer relevant to the organization. Our ability to address the enormous challenges of a connected society is ultimately contingent on our ability to question the management model we have inherited from the industrial age, that set of bureaucratic practices that foster clientelism, discourage transparency, frustrate experimentation, deter creative thinking and overvalue previous experience over creativity and experimentation.

Remember that the “Learning Zone” is always outside the “Comfort Zone”. Question the “Status quo” with a growth mindset, encourage in your heart words like: Drive, curiosity, ambition. Take smart risks and make sure you have enough rebels in your organization. Rebellious people are people of ideas, positive, able to see things not for what they are but for what they can become. They are demanding and creative people, born to rebel. They are essential in innovation teams, without their help significant large-scale innovation is unlikely to emerge.

6. Innovate.

Dare to innovate. Encourage around you a Culture of innovation. Culture must be designed and cultivated. If you want Create a culture of innovation, you must do it intentionally, be a model, accept mistakes as learning, and recognize innovative behaviors. Make sure innovators can thrive in your organization. The problem of innovation is not creativity, lack of ideas or talent, the problem is not facilitating innovation so that innovators have adequate resources to test and validate their ideas. It’s fundamental
Invest in innovation in times of frenetic changes and uncertainties
such as the ones we are currently experiencing.

Don’t stop. Overcome the fear of failure and making mistakes. Don’t get obsessed with making everything perfect the first time: it’s impossible. Just decide and move on. Eliminates pressure. Consider that your decisions are temporary, and that later you will return to them again. Progress through iterations. Time is the key variable. That’s why you can’t stop. Let the project grow and speak to you, to take shape and evolve. As you progress through the iterative process, your decisions will be better informed and will have the input of your collaborators.

7. Learn.

Changes in your profession happen at full speed. That is why it is essential that you are able to learn and develop new skills and abilities. The pillars of the system are moving. The changes that are coming are really significant and are giving rise to a new paradigm. This time the short-term answers are not worth it. It is not enough that you “survive” the changes locked in your old refuge. Perhaps the time has come for you to leave your “Comfort Zone”. You must be proactive. It analyzes trends, understands and internalizes the new models of value creation through people, the new social structures, the new markets that are emerging. Cultivate the skills needed to turn change into an opportunity for personal reinvention. These are bad times to doubt your ability to change. The worst thing you can do is doubt yourself, your ability to adapt and master, as you have always done, the new reality around you. Make continuous learning a habit in your life.

8. Undertake.

It’s time to create, not plan. Your future is to be made and depends on you, instead of spending energy trying to predict it, turn them into creating it. My experience as an entrepreneur It has led me to see entrepreneurship as a personal attitude in our lives, as an impulse that leads us to step out of our comfort zone to build our own future, focusing on what gives meaning to our lives and is important to us, taking smart risks when others opt for security, moving resources from the past to the future and learning from our mistakes, transforming the contingencies we encounter along the way into future opportunities.

Lean Startup is the methodology you can use to transform your dream into reality based on the focus on the client and constant experimentation to build your idea, test it and see if your project really has a gap in the market or not. In this way it is the market that guides our strategy and not the strategy that guides our business model. This way of approaching your business ideas, allows you to undertake avoiding making large investments of time and money without knowing if the product will be well received, then you can invest more or ask for financing when you have validated with real customers the viability of the business.

9. Accelerate.

Accelerate, connect with the best in your profession, use collective intelligence to compress years of learning into just months, Accelerate transformation with integrated agile teams, mass collaboration as a model of value creation and emphasizing the development of transformative leadership, the adoption of agile methodologies and the creation of a portfolio of validated innovation initiatives for subsequent scale.

Surround yourself with transformative leaders who want to accelerate change. Leaders with credibility, capable of connecting, persuading and convincing. Inspire them to be brave, let them experiment, fail, learn, and move forward. Learn from startups. Anticipate your customers’ needs, adapt before your competition, and leverage exponential technologies to create a superior business model.

In times of change and uncertainty, it is always better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. So jump into the sand. Test your ideas in real conditions, with real customers and in real markets. Don’t waste time simulating reality; Create it and experiment with it. Turn your project into reality, learn and pivot. There is no greater risk today than standing still watching your longtime customers abandon you, your margins shrink and the best talent leave the company.

10. Enjoy.

Don’t fill your life only with seriousness and responsibility. Be generous with yourself and have fun. It is becoming increasingly clear that people are more efficient when we feel happy and enjoy what we do. If you want, work hard. But please have fun. Laughter is healthy and contagious. Watch the elite athletes you admire the most. You will find that everyone works hard, but that they always reserve a space to express a contagious joy.

Fill your future with good memories, family and professional moments of fun and joy. Celebrate your achievements and progress, no matter how small. It cultivates the smile, it is a powerful weapon that transmits security in others, opens doors in relationships and helps us maintain a positive attitude that, in the long run, makes us cheerful, happy and optimistic people.