“Do You Sharpen Your Saw Regularly?” - Professor M.S.Rao

"As long as you love and learn, you are young. The day you stop loving and learning you become old." – Professor M.S.Rao, Founder, MSR Leadership Consultants, India


Students often think that they can say “good bye” to education once they switch from academic life to corporate life. But the fact is that the real learning starts from corporate world. Whatever students have learnt academically puts them on the corporate ladder. However, in order to survive in the corporate world they must work smart to acquire and hone new skills and abilities. Besides, they must also sharpen their skills continuously to race ahead of others.

Marshall Goldsmith in his book “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There How Successful People Become Even More Successful” emphasizes on sharpening skills. People often get complacent with success and don’t improve within the organizations. It proves costly in their later part of life as their peers and subordinates would outsmart them professionally. What worked to reach the present position might not work to reach the future position. Hence, there is constant need to improve and grow in this world. In addition, Stephen R Covey emphasizes sharpening saw in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The successful people have the habit of sharpening their saws constantly. They learn and grow continuously.


Tips to Sharpen Your Saw

Improvement is important and is an essential ingredient for all individuals. They must improvise, innovate and invigorate constantly to sharpen their saws. Here are the tips to sharpen your skills:

• Have an appetite for learning. Learn from everyone without any false-ego.
• Invest a part of your earnings for learning and development.
• Daily invest your time for reading. As you take food for your survival you need to read daily to update and sharpen your skills.
• Learn from mistakes. We all make mistakes. But recognizing and realizing mistakes help us prevent mistakes in future thus enhancing our success rate.
• Strive for excellence, not perfection as perfection is mere impossible. Striving to be at your best gives you great satisfaction and motivates you to move forward.
• Above all, share your knowledge as knowledge grows when shared. The more you share the more pleasure you derive out of it. You will be happy to see people growing in front of you with your knowledge.


Conclusion

“The illiterates of the 21st century are the people who cannot unlearn, relearn and learn.” - Alvin Toffler

The rapid growth in technology has compelled people to perform. Failing to do so lead them to getting oblivion. There is no meaning to life if there is no continuous value addition. Hence, learn from everybody and from all sources to sharpen your skills not only to stay healthy but also to stay ahead of others.



Professor M.S.Rao
Founder and Chief Consultant,
MSR Leadership Consultants, India
Blog: http://profmsr.blogspot.com
Where Knowledge is Wealth
Email: profmsr7@gmail.com



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