RENEWAL—Priority One.

It’s the end of the year and that time for discussing your goals and objectives for next year. It seems to be on the mind of every person right now—what do I want my life to look like next year? What do I want to accomplish? What have I learned through my recent experiences? This thought process is called “RENEWAL” and when you look at it on a macro level, many great companies do this all the time as well. If you look at perennially successful companies they often have one common ingredient, namely, R & D (research and development). It is quite difficult to be successful perennially without a passion for R & D—it’s what keeps great organizations at the top of their industry. They understand the importance of RENEWAL to keep things ‘cutting edge’, at the top of their game and their industry—they don’t just do it, they obsess about it, every day.


Think about your own R & D, your own RENEWAL—how often do you contemplate it? How often do you actually work on it? If you acquire a personal R & D/RENEWAL mindset, you’ll focus each day on developing creativity and personal growth, basically on ‘auto-pilot’. If your daily focus becomes continual learning and commitment to growth, you have embodied the R & D mindset, and can place yourself at the head of the pack (in a leadership position).

Every project, assignment, position/role/job should be an experience that you can learn from, and therefore embody RENEWAL. If they are not, you should re-consider the amount of time you’re devoting to each and move onward. Why is continual learning and renewal so important?

1) Simply, to make a better living for yourself

2) To improve your problem-solving and decision-making skills

3) To cultivate an openness to new/other possibilities

4) To increase your ‘brain power’

Questions to ask in developing and maintaining your renewal mindset:

1) What have I learned in the last week? the last month? Repeat frequently.

2) Does my current project/role/assignment have specific learning goals? If not, restructure it.

3) What have I learned in my current role? Is the learning experience positive? Is the learning what I had expected? If that learning experience has not broadened you, you should reflect on the time and commitment you’ve invested and consider alternative paths to place you on the route to renewal and continual learning.

Don’t wait to start your own personal R & D/Renewal/Learning Plan. Chances are someone else has already made that personal commitment for some time and they may have beaten you to the punch (career-wise or R & D-wise) just by sheer determination for personal or career growth….