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Why personal development tools are easier (quicker) to design than to use March 17, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development.
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If a brilliant and technically savvy 15-year old can design a personal-growth digital app relatively quickly that helps the user overcome procrastination (it’s been done), can the same 15-year old implement his/her own personal development program with equal facility and speed?

Probably not, even though both are change-applications.

Generally speaking, designing a specific and highly targeted app or gadget can be a short process, although granted, acquiring the technical knowledge and ability to do so can take considerable time.

Perceiving the need for a personal growth gadget or app requires excellent social and market recognition skills; implementing your own personal growth paradigms takes wisdom.

And the achievement of wisdom is a difficult and slow process – often life-long.

Within the world of the personal growth and self-improvement business or industry, devices such as templates, plans, and formulas are essentially gadgets or apps. They are tools.

It is likely that with flashes of inspiration a specific tool for carpentry can be designed relatively quickly.

Becoming a master carpenter takes considerably more time.

The same with personal growth.

Personal development: Evaluating non-traditional leadership criteria March 8, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Leadership.
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If developing the attribute or character trait of leadership capability or potential is part of your personal growth program, you may be pursuing that goal from an overly traditional viewpoint.

Particularly in a business setting, the requirement for demonstrating leadership capability may often be limited to a number of perhaps stereotyped and oversimplified traditional criteria.

Criteria that may be out of sync with the qualities of leadership required in today’s fast-evolving (even revolutionary) world of interpersonal relations.

In an article by Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times International Weekly edition, titled: “How to Get a Job at Google”, the author discusses Google’s hiring criteria. One of the criteria is leadership.

Friedman interviewed Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google. Bock emphasized that Google is particularly interested in emergent leadership as opposed to “traditional” leadership:

“Traditional leadership is, were you president of the chess club? Were you vice president of sales? How quickly did you get there? We don’t care. What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you’re a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else? Because what’s critical to be an effective leader in this environment is you have to be willing to relinquish power,” Bock says.

Something to think about.