“The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.”
(Arie de Geus)
Everyone strives to have a competitive advantage. The ability to obtain knowledge that puts yourself or your company a step ahead of your competition is sought after with incredible fervor. Learning applies to a multitude of situations and can bring a heightened sense of motivation and confidence to the way that you work.
So how does learning bring about a competitive advantage?
First, learning is humbling. It opens your eyes to see that you do not know everything there is to know. You have to ask for help from someone that has more expertise in a certain area or read a book written by someone that has more knowledge. In doing this, it opens the door for new ideas to take root in the company. Innovation creates value.
“Being mindful, authentic, and humble are important learning behaviors—especially for managers and leaders.”
(Edward Hess)
In addition, learning broadens your ability to have conversations with different types of people, which in turn can open the door for creative partnerships that lead to growth and entrance into new areas. Learning to talk to people can also help life around the office to become more intentional and personal. This leads to better relationships with the people that you are around on a weekly basis.
The key to learning is your mindset. In recognizing that it is a humbling experience you prepare yourself for some road blocks in the time to come. This helps in the speed of the learning process. In failing at certain tasks, you would be able to see that it is fine to make a mistake and therefore get passed these hindrances. This helps you to learn at a higher level and to adequately know how to get threw problems that pop up along the way.
“Even in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.”
(Carol Dweck)
These characteristics apply throughout your workplace as well. Treating your work as a learning opportunity should be humbling. It should help you to gain the ability to work with people to gain more perspective. Also, when trying new ways of doing things, it is important to know that mistakes will occur and this helps you to make better decisions and to solve problems in more creative ways than you may have otherwise. Learn to transform your definition of failure. This is an advantage.