Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it's good for your career

We have all heard the phrase "curiosity killed the cat", but in my experience, intellectual curiosity is great for your career... (and in case you're interested, Warren Buffett agrees with me).

The message from this blog post is simply that approaching business and perhaps life, with a desire to learn, will be good for your career. I personally, am aiming for "lifelong learning" so I encourage you to read on for supporting arguments and tips on how to achieve just that.

Costs
The costs associated with pursuing learning will vary with the approach you take. One likely cost however, is time:
- time away from your job and the activities that contribute towards this year's bonus, or
- personal time that could be spent with family, friends etc.

Build a broad skill base - pursue learning, never money

Here is a piece of advice that I received early in my career:
 "Build a broad base of skills and experience that you can rely on as you progress in your career. While it may be possible (easy?) to secure a more senior position...greater responsibility and expectations come with increased salary. If you one day find yourself in a role where you cannot meet expectations, it is near impossible to move...in any direction. Build that broad base, move up (only) when you are ready and the money will come."

I have considered this advice numerous times throughout my career. For example, when considering which role to pursue next, I try to identify a role at least one position further along my preferred career path. I then find a real role description for that role and see what skills and experience are required. That then gives me the criteria for the role that I am pursuing right now: Which of all the roles out there, am I confident that I can succeed in and will give me the most and best, skills and experience?

Change management tip - "Start, then strengthen"

You will massively improve your chances of successfully making changes in your workplace if you implement a simple and essential change first, then look to incorporate the more challenging elements later. In essence, "Start, then strengthen".

The temptation when assessing the scope of proposed changes is to correct all the known issues (major and minor) in the first iteration. Your thinking may be "I'm going to have spend a lot of time and energy convincing stakeholders to buy into these changes, it makes sense to try and fix everything as part of this project".

Before going down that path however, I advise you to consider the following:
1) Larger more complex projects/changes have more elements for detractors to criticise

Exceed your boss' expectations, then ask for what you want

This may seem obvious, but the most important person to impress at work is your line manager (your boss). S/he is the one who has the biggest influence on what work you do, what (if any) bonus you're entitled to, whether you're deserving of a pay rise, what training the organisation will finance for you and so on. Your line manager is also the gate-keeper to more senior members of the organisation and likely a person with numerous contacts within the organisation and/or across the industry.

The only way to impress your boss is to clearly understand what s/he expects from you, then deliver work that exceeds those expectations. This applies to more than just the output itself ( e.g. exceeding your sales target), but also the way you deliver the output (e.g. the relationships you build with your coworkers, the processes you put in place etc.).