Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, stresses that "whether you are a CEO or just starting out--each and every day provides the opportunity to learn and get better at what you do”. Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, adds “You've got to keep learning, keep changing … and reinvent yourself”. Stressing the importance of education on your career, he added “you know where you want to go, and you know that you can learn to get there. That’s power, absolute power”.
All top executives like Jamie Dimon or Jeff Immelt will agree on the power of learning, but how to maximize learning takes a dedicated effort. Executive education, books and magazines are a start, but is education enough to achieve excellence? Education yields the best results only when coupled with a deliberate will and a competitive desire to get better and increase your performance at work. As a matter of facts, great leaders often have an insatiable appetite for feedback and a strong desire to get better. At the core of performance is indeed the desire to improve everyday and deliver results measurably better today than yesterday. Education is merely a weapon to achieve excellence, and not the end-all, be-all of great performance. Think about the leader as an athlete running a 100-meter: he works with a personal coach to get better, he is focused on the task at hand, fast, and obsessed by improving his time to get to the finish line.
How you are going to build your career is also a critical determinant of how much you will learn. Most employees eye with envy the next job up in the career ladder, and their only goal is to eventually take their boss’ job, but horizontal career progression will help maximize your learning experiences. Moving sideways, from one function to another or one company to another, will help you broaden your perspective and maximize your learning experience, ultimately giving you the right tools for career progression.
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