Owning your own personal development

A key challenge for any fast paced organisation is creating an environment where employees really do own their own personal development. The question is how do you do this? For me, there are a number of critical areas:

• An environment where 'just standing still' is simply not good enough. Your current skills and knowledge may equip you to cope with the demands of your job today......in fact you may get away with it for a couple of months.......but beyond that - forget it!
• An environment where everyone from top down are visibily participating in learning related activities whether this is coaching, training, stretch asignments etc.
• An environment that treats learning as one of the critical factors in being successful in the business. This is as important as client relationship, financial management, marketing or anything else that is perhaps traditionally easier to associate directly to the bottom line.

So....it's about the environment that we create around us at work then, is it? Well, yes but remembering that an organisation is a collection of individuals. Of course HR can facilitate the process and you can introduce key measures to influence employee behaviour. But at the end of the day it's all about priorities and motivation.....for each individual.

For me, success would mean that everyone is thinking about their own development - where do they want to grow, what key skills and experiences do they want to gain? The organisation is providing ample opportunitity to help people achieve these things. It's supply and demand!