“The problem, you see, is this. I’ve had lots of interesting experiences, but I’m not sure I’ve figured out what they taught me. I’ve had my share of successes, but I’ve never paused to reflect on why that particular assignment went well – I was always too busy dashing on to the next assignment. And, unfortunately, I’ve had my share of failures – client assignments that didn’t work out as planned. And there I was even more eager to dash on to the next piece of work, and not look back on what went wrong. And even if I did look back, I have to confess that it was more normal for me to think about what the client people did wrong (Those darn clients!”) than what I could have done better.”

Since I was talking to myself, I indulged myself in an old joke. “The trouble is that some people have five years’ experience, and other people have one year’s experience five times.” The difference, of course, is in the ability to learn. Experience is the best teacher, but you have to do the homework.

I realized that if I was going to build my knowledge and skills, it was not enough to have a wide variety of experiences: I had to work at learning from them. I stole the following quote from somewhere, but now cannot remember where. I’d love to give appropriate credit, because it sums up very well what personal asset building is all about

What we are is determined by what we experience, which is determined by what we do, which is determined by what we learn, which is determined by how we interpret events.

The lesson of this (inspirational?) quote is that, just like my experience of looking at myself in the mirror, the essence of personal growth lies in taking the time to look back at what you’ve been doing and working at extracting the lessons from it.

Excerpted from ‘Managing the Professional Service Firm’ by David Maister, pages 150 to 151