How often do you think about the work you do?
Many years ago I worked in business improvement as part of my work as an Occupational Psychologist. It was something I thoroughly enjoyed and was good at!
I’ve regularly considered how I work and how I can improve. Something may work well, but there is always room for improvement and I like the Japanese notion of KAIZEN which I used when working on projects of Total Productive Maintenance when working in Business change with Royal Mail.
Back in 2007 I won a National Career Award for my Gold Career Programme, and it was fantastic news to see the work I did recognised by my professional association. It was developed based on working with clients for over 8 years in private practice. 5 or 6 years on and I’ve learnt more, used this with hundreds of clients and regularly introduced tweaks and improvements.
In 2013 I’m making more changes, making parts of my Career Discovery programme more integral rather than an optional extra. I like the changes, as did my latest 2 clients who I’ve been changing things as we go.
It’s important to me that I always do my best, and I do this through reflection and analysis of how I’m working and also in reading widely and seeing how this affects what I do.
I’ve also been looking back and reviewing my archive of material, and I’ve revisited some work from 1993, that’s 20 years ago!
Twenty years ago I created my very first career initiative – Career Horizons. I didn’t have course, or programme added to the title for a very good reason. Within my company people went on a course this was going to be much more active, I wanted people to both be reflective and also to use their initiative as they moved forward and made the right decisions for them.
I’m now revising my Career Discovery Programme, making improvements and changing focus a little, and it is going to be an initiative, not a programme! More details will be with you in a few weeks time but I want to get everything in place before a launch.
I’m also reflecting on my blog and newsletter, it’s getting blurred and I want to keep things a bit different.
I want my newsletters to be more personal and to give you a challenge to consider. The blog will contain more ‘how to ..’ type articles. Visit my blog and you will see well over 1000 articles (1160!) covering job search, interviews, students & grads and more. You can easily get to the right section using the search facility.
On my blog you will see another change – read any blog post and there are links to 3 related posts to help you find useful content. I like this change!
Your Challenge
How often do you consider the way you work?
Will you take one day this week and as you do each task ask yourself why?
You may like to consider who you do your work for, and what they do with it.
Too often reports are created and get filed, never used, or the person you do some work for would really prefer the data presented in a different way, but didn’t think to talk with you.
It may be you could simplify a process. Think about at home, isn’t is easier to keep your mugs and coffee near the kettle, how could you change how thing are laid out at work to be more effective. What files do you use regularly, could they be easier to access?
Taking the idea of constant and never ending improvement think about how you can make a small improvement. It doesn’t have to be major, but could you consider a small change that you could make.
Think about the letters and emails you write, the way you manage your time, your relationships with your boss, co-workers, customers. Processes you follow.
And perhaps for a particular situation you could make a note of what happened, what you thought and felt, how good an experience it was, alternatives and how you could improve for another time.
I’d love to know how you get on so do leave a message on my blog or email me!
Wishing you a productive day
Denise X
