Personal Development (Batman vs Superman)

Contractors must develop management talent.

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Management talent must be developed at an unprecedented rate and those that master this process will dominate the next 15 years.

Leadership Tools: Personal Development. How do you think? How do you act?

Tim Harris works with many of our clients helping them position their companies to better recruit and retain talent. Tim pointed out that talent development really comes down to Superman vs. Batman.  


Superman was born with great powers and found a way to put them to use.  

Batman was an ordinary person with an extraordinary problem to solve. He sought out the best training around the world and practiced relentlessly until he became the person that could solve the problem.   


A major thought change that needs to occur is whether talent is born or built. It is more comfortable and far simpler to just accept that someone is either born with it or not. The truth is that no one was born an electrician, plumber, architect, project manager or CEO. We were all built through our environment and we can all continue to be built through disciplined practice.  

How do you think about talent development? How do you think about your own development?  


Books:

Learn more  




Opportunity Evaluation (2 Critical Dimensions)
Your strategic decisions show up most vividly in the opportunities you choose to pursue. Disciplined and aggressive business development will ensure a strong pipeline of opportunities. Choosing what to pursue requires balancing two critical dimensions.
Lean Principle - Value Add vs. Non Value Add
For specialty contractors the field workforce represents most of their competitive advantage as well as their biggest source of variability. Making improvements to field productivity requires deeply understanding what truly adds value to the customer.
Appearance and Experience of Management Control
As your career develops and you grow into roles of greater responsibility, one of the biggest challenges is what Jennifer Garvey Berger calls “The paradox of the appearance of increasing control and the experience of decreasing control.”