Blueprint for Professional and Personal Growth

Blueprint for Professional and Personal Growth

Executive Summary

In every context, innovation involves the creation or making better of a product, service, or any process that has the potential of having a positive change in a person’s life or the community they live. Previously in my MBA courses, I have come to understand that the chief role of any leader and leadership is generally the creation of a sustainable, positive, and productive environment. Through a myriad of discussions and personal reflection in the past week, I have had the opportunity of interacting and learning more concepts from my classmates, creative leaders, and my professor. All of these individuals that I have had the chance of learning from have at one point in their lives become successful by way of applying their knowledge and expertise in their institutions.

From a personal perspective, the unique resource that has had a considerable impact on me all across this course was one by Grives and Puccio, namely The Innovative Team: Unleashing Creative Potential Breakthrough Results. This particular resource elaborates on what it refers to as the quantum leap reasoning process. This is a specific four-step model that the human brain takes when it generates various creative solutions (Puccio, n.d). The other resource that I most identified with was the foresight framework. The foresight framework significantly helped me to understand better how to unleash my innovative process and take advantage of personal weaknesses and strengths to pave the way for positive synergy. Tapping into my innovative proves and leveraging both my weaknesses and strengths has substantially enabled me to shape my objectives, given that the entire process allows me to become an effective leader for all my future endeavors.

Individual and Professional Life Strategy

It is interesting to note that there is no single leader that was born with the ability to think creatively (Dyer, Gregersen, and Christensen, 2009). As such, it is justifiable to state that given the right tools and practicing the innovative process, one can effectively strengthen the creative muscle with time. Dyer et al. (2009) expound on the individual strategy of developing a plan of action and experimenting with the mentioned strategy. Soon, I am planning on implementing Puccio’s foresight framework for every other profound problem that I come across in my individual and professional experience. In my career and professional life, I prefer implementing various projects, and most often, this particular process takes the majority of my time away from my process of innovation. Preference for implementing different projects in my professional life decreases the number of potential solutions that could have been allocated to various creative thinking projects. Grivas et al. (2012) elucidate on this individual concept by stating that comprehending one’s preferences and the preferences of one’s teammates is significant for raising their ability to come up with different innovative solutions to various challenges.

By taking quality time to consider one’s preferences and those of their team in the stage of the creative process, one can substantially save significant hours and financial resources that would have been lost in wasted endeavors and failed implementations. Taking ample time to consider one’s preferences and that of one’s team members can make the difference to the next quantum leap. For my creative and innovative strategy, there are several main issues that I would require to focus on. These critical issues related to my innovative and the current organization that I work for include comprehending my preference and those of my team members as well as exercising divergent thinking and becoming a keen listener and questioner.

Understanding personal preferences and those of my team shall enable me to leverage the strength of my team and their weaknesses all across my innovative process. Focusing on this particular area shall also work towards contributing to the accountability of my team when it comes to working on various projects that are not owned by the team. Practicing divergent thinking shall be of benefit, given that I often take the first innovative strategy and not involve other persons that try to generate different potential solutions. Usually, this challenge tends to be a downside to my team, given that the team does not exercise its full potential in terms of innovative ideas. On the other hand, becoming a keen listener and asking open-ended and strategic questions would assist in challenging the nature of events in the organization that I work. Asking open-ended questions shall significantly help in developing various opportunities for various possibilities and solutions (Grives and Puccio, 2012). Effective leaders are defined by their ability to question the state of affairs, a factor that significantly leads them into developing beneficial changes.

By having to comprehend my area of focus sufficiently, I can effectively make use of the breakthrough process of thinking and the foresight framework to reinforce my leadership capabilities and put myself in a better position for the organization that I work for to advocate for innovative change. Understanding the particular area of my focus will significantly aid me in facilitating different creative ideas and work hand in hand with fellow team members to make fundamental decisions. Such decisions are in line with the future objectives and the goals at hand and assist in the growth of others by taking advantage of the team’s weaknesses and strengths (Zenger and Fulkman, 2009).

Action Plan for my Professional Goals

The main objective that I would like to achieve in addition to the WMBA blueprint that I have is to begin something that opens more room for creativity. Previously, I had thought of initializing a blog to assist me in sustaining my creative process. Running a blog would be of benefit to different aspects of both my personal and professional life. Developing and managing a blog would facilitate me in becoming a learner, given that I prefer reading about various topics before writing them. Maintaining a blog would also significantly equip me with research skills and substantially assist in refining my writing process in addition to helping me become an expert in several topics. The blog that I intend on starting is a platform that would substantially and up gaining a myriad of followers. However, this would not be my main objective from the platform as my overall aim is to enhance and manage my creativity.

The initial goal that would aid me in achieving my set objectives is identifying several successful blogs in a range of different platforms that I have interest in. Such a spectrum would range from such topics as weather topics to financial issues. The significance of this individual goal is to develop an understanding of different patterns of writing and ensure that such designs have become successful. The other stage of this single objective would be to reach out to the various writing patterns and identifying whether or not such models shall assist me in finding the most suitable ways of starting a successful blog. The initial objective of my plan would substantially enable me to grow and extend the current network that I have and consecutively my knowledge (Dyer et al., 2009). Lastly, I would set out to identify any person that I would share the blog with. This would involve promoting the blog on social media and Face book. Despite advertising my blogs on these platforms, I would work painstakingly to ensure that my blog is professional. This is becouse my main objective lies in formulating something that I shall derive passion in doing and one that shall open doors to my innovative process.

References

Dyer, J. H., Gregersen, H. B., & Christensen, C. M. (2009). The innovator’s DNA. Harvard Business Review, 87(12), 60–67.

Grivas, C., & Puccio, G. J. (2012). The innovative team: Unleashing the creative potential for breakthrough results.

Puccio, G. J. (n.d.). Tapping into our creative thinking skills to manage complex problems [PowerPoint. slides].

Zenger, J., & Folkman, J. (2009). Ten fatal flaws that derail leaders. Harvard Business Review, 87(6) 18.