Do you work in an environment that encourages personal growth? I guess it is possible to write a whole book on this topic but for this blog post I want to keep it simple and only focus on one aspect and that is "your best effort". Are you giving your best effort in what you do on a day-to-day basis? Do you like/love your work/task so much that you try to do everything that you do to the best of your capabilities? This is key for your own development as a human being and the success of your company! Let's look at an example: Your manager asks you to prepare a presentation for the Senior Management Team. The topic is the optimization of the online configuration tools that your company offers on your website. There are probably a number of people that could provide valuable input for your presentation. As you go back and forth and collect feedback from the different people/teams your presentation gets better. At what point is it so good that you feel you can't make it any better? Keep in mind that you have only limited time to finish this task. When you can honestly say that you can't improve it any further (in the given time) than you did your best. It doesn't mean that this is perfect or that anyone else couldn't do it any better it means that this is the best that you could do in the given time. This is how you grow. You stretch yourself until it hurts somewhat. Once you get more comfortable with the challenge you stretch some more.
In order to grow you have to challenge yourself and yes you have to fail.
Failing is part of growing! You don't want to fail on key tasks and therefore it is important that your company provides you an opportunity to fail on smaller, less important tasks so that you get the learning experience without jeopardizing the key projects.
Remember as a kid when you started to learn to read and write? It takes time to learn these skills and if you stop challenging yourself you will stop to grow. This is a true lose/lose for yourself and your company. Therefore make sure that you are in an environment that encourages consistent growth! This is not a nice/feel good kind of position but it is one that allows you to grow as a human being.
So ask yourself : Do you give your best effort in everything you do consistently?
