Shocking insight huh? Assets generate money and earn income by themselves. Your skills do not. They are offered to employers, clients, consultancies and others in order to earn you money. In this way they are enablers.
Good skill levels will enable you to get a better role, to move upward in your own company, or even to start delivering services as a freelancer or consulting professional. In fact your investment in enablers such as skills, knowledge and experiences is probably the most important investment you will make in your life.
Without it you are destined to stay where you are or to move horizontally or slightly vertically. (Only!)
But which enablers should I go for? Ah ha! That’s a much harder question.
Before asking that you need to ask; what do I want to do with my career?
Where are you working now? Are you a mechanical journeyman or electrical technician? Then maybe you should consider developing some skills in reliability first?
Are you already a trained and experienced RCM facilitator? Then what’s next for you? Should you do more RCM? That’s okay, it will work. It will enable you to move up the RCM hierarchy and get recognized by more and more people as an expert in the area. It’s what I did for example, and it went okay for me so far.
But how do you take RCM as a base and then move your career to the next level?
What about Weibull Analysis? Any ideas about that? Nope? Okay then – find out! Look for online training, courses or seminars in your area, public courses, whatever you need to do to take it to the next level.
However, DO NOT wait for your company to pay for you! It’s your career – work it out!
Your company will train you on whatever adds value to them, not to you. (And so they should do, that’s business) You have to be on the lookout for what will develop you.
What about presentation skills? Public speaking? Negotiating? Planning and Scheduling? Tribology? Vibration management? The list goes on and on…
When looking for the next enablers for You Inc. you need to be thinking about what will take you to the next level, and not necessarily for the same employer!
Getting them is a different story of course. What if you can’t afford the training course? Or if they never run courses like this in your city? Or… and so on.
There are a myriad of ways to get better. Find the best and work with them, throw yourself into projects where you have no clue what to do. You will learn pretty fast then let me guarantee you. Get a mentor, get into online forums and learning. READ A BOOK! Whatever… learn how to do it.
Some companies still hide behind qualifications. If they don’t get a good CV with all the right certificates then they look no further. But not all companies… many will recognize the depth of experience you have earned and recognize this accordingly.