Growth Through Crop Rotation

      An interesting article appeared in the New York Times (dated July sixth, 2008), regarding professional growth in a career. It starts with the question:

WHY do some people reach their creative potential in business while other equally talented peers don’t?

Then it compares basically two approaches in a career:

the answer to the puzzle lies in how people think about intelligence and talent. Those who believe they were born with all the smarts and gifts they’re ever going to have approach life with what she calls a “fixed mind-set.” Those who believe that their own abilities can expand over time, however, live with a “growth mind-set.”

      The conclusion of this argument is that when recruiting new employees, the company should look for a golden mean between these two extremes and that is:

she suggests looking for both talent and a growth mind-set in prospective hires — people with a passion for learning who thrive on challenge and change.

      To add to the wisdom of this article, here is one suggestion from me. From my many years of experience of working as an architect, I found that for an educated professional, nothing accelerates professional growth better than changing jobs every 2-3 years, till the age of 40 atleast. When you are young the adaptability to new job environment, hardware, software, infrastructure, people, responsibilities etc. is sharp and quick. Also you tend to learn and acquire new skills and grasp knowledge faster, when young.

      Changing jobs frequently works quite like crop-rotation in concept. To each job you bring the wisdom of your old skills and enrich yourself with new skills. Its like a symbiotic enrichment between the employee and the company. Also a new job refreshes your mind and you tend to approach the problems with new found enthusiasm. Let me further elaborate this parallel of crop-rotation.

      For the past three summers, the main crop of my kitchen garden was tomatoes. Each year I planted a new species, namely Burpee, Roma and Grape tomatoes. I enjoyed it to its maximum potential by adding them to different recipes, taking many photos capturing their growth, sharing the huge surplus with all my neighbors and created wonderful memories for my child. This year I chose to change the crop to strawberries, to seek new joy and wonder.

      After planting them in early Spring as bare root, it was wonderful to see them come to leafy life within a week! This was followed by tiny white blossoms. The joy of watching the fruit evolve from the blossom was like a “eureka” moment for me! It answered my questions of how in the world does such a beautiful fruit get  such a complex texture and color? Also this new crop is taking a different set of nutrients from the soil and exhaling differently into the soil. Its quite similar to the symbiotic enrichment between the employee and the company

      So much about the benefits of changing jobs frequently. With this approach, by the time you are 40, you acquire a richly diversified portfolio of experience. This in turn gives you a visionary perspective of your future. With this you can reinvent yourself in many ways and grow more prolifically. To wrap up this post here are a few photos of a typical strawberry plant, which depict the journey from flower to fruit. Hope they bring joy and wonder to you as well!

Ratna

   Strawberry Blossoms

   Green Fruit

   White Fruit

   Certainly Red

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Success is a journey, not a destination.

- Deepak Chopra