I saw this sign on a building site the other day. Whilst there are some environments where – absolutely - you should be briefed before you start work (building sites, operating theatres, trains, nuclear reactors, you get the drift…) in the ever changing world of work and business, increasingly it’s a case of learning as you go. And in this scrambled up world of work, there is often no briefing.
Most of us were never ‘trained’ in business or whatever we are talented in. I didn’t go on a course on how to write a book. None of us went on a course to learn Twitter or Outlook or the iPhone. I didn’t go to business school either. There are millions of successful executives and entrepreneurs with no formal ‘training’; their training has been doing the job, learning at the coal face.
We are a generation of workers that learns as we go. Having come from an organisation that used Amstrad word processors, I remember using my first PC in 1993, it was the first time I used a mouse. There was no preparation or computer course for that, you just learnt as you went. And that’s the best way to learn, by actually doing it.
So when people say to me they want to be successful in business, should they take a class at business school? Or they say, I’d like to be an author, is there a writing course I recommend, my advice is simple:
JUST DO IT!
Most of us were never ‘trained’ in business or whatever we are talented in. I didn’t go on a course on how to write a book. None of us went on a course to learn Twitter or Outlook or the iPhone. I didn’t go to business school either. There are millions of successful executives and entrepreneurs with no formal ‘training’; their training has been doing the job, learning at the coal face.
We are a generation of workers that learns as we go. Having come from an organisation that used Amstrad word processors, I remember using my first PC in 1993, it was the first time I used a mouse. There was no preparation or computer course for that, you just learnt as you went. And that’s the best way to learn, by actually doing it.
So when people say to me they want to be successful in business, should they take a class at business school? Or they say, I’d like to be an author, is there a writing course I recommend, my advice is simple:
JUST DO IT!
