Improving is a process, not an event
You build success by focusing not on getting us much as you can but on integrating the few you value the most.
Years ago, when I restarted playing tennis after twenty years of "inactivity", I hired a professor to improve my game, but although his efforts and my willing to apply everything he told me, my game was still the same and I got frustrated. I was losing with tennis players who were inferior and who had never played tennis as much as I did in the past!
Then, I saw my sons learning with a professor who changed my mindset for ever. He, once a professional tennis player himself, was now an expert teaching how to play tennis to people who has never holded a raquet, young or adult, and I thought I would need some of this return-to-the-basics approach to improve my tennis in a proper way. It worked.
I learnt from him how tennis works, drawing a court on the clay and understanding what speed was and why hitting hard is not the same than hitting fast. It was a matter of distance divided by time. There was no strength in the equation. So, if you want to hit fast, why don't you make your opponent to run a long distance in a short period of time, instead of reliying on power to gain velocity?
That was the first of a series of insights that I learnt from him during two years and until he left the city.
And that's the key word: series.
One bite at a time
The difference between him and the other professors who tried to help me in the past was that he was only aiming for a single thing to improve, and although it seemed not enough in the beginning, I ended up integrating very well every one of his lessons.
That's why, since then, I've hired different coaches, and I've always started my training by telling them that I'll try to learn one thing from them in a few months, to try to apply it by myself afterwards. I know they can offer me lots of savvy tips, but I don't want to rush anymore, and I can work with them again in the future. I prefer one single thing to integrate properly than an unbearable amount of stuff that bloks my improvement.
As good professionals, they always start willing to teach me lots of things, because they feel I that's the way to make me value their advice but it's not. I value their advice for my results and sense improvement, no for the quantity of tips I receive. I know I should change lots of things to improve even more, but that's not the way I learn, and I will end up frustrated if I don't get what I wanted when I first started learning.
I've learnt lots of things in the last years: how to be intense, how to breath, how to throw the ball in a serve, how to keep up a long rally... That's a lot of improvement, don't you think?
And that's how I see business improvement and my contribution to it as well. As a proces.
Indeed, the most successful clients I have, instead of trying to extract all the ideas I have for them, take one or two and integrate them into their business and their culture. That's how they build success in the long haul: not by quantity, but by value.
During the last years, my tennis has improved and my results have followed. I don't train always, but I sure train when I think I've integrated my last learning and I'm ready for the next one: this could be a month or a year, but I keep learning and improving.
An that's the point of improvement: is a process, not an event.
© Oriol López 2022