How your Environment can Influence you Positively
Believe it or not, your current situation or position in life is as a result of your decisions, behavioral patterns, values and believes much of which is influenced by your environment; from people you spend time with, your workplace, government policies etc. The environment as a system can either empower your ambitions or stifle them.
Your environment determines your potential as much as you determine it with your own personal power.
Over the years, I have observed that people who thrive in a certain environment would suffer in another kind of environment. We have seen Nigerians frustrated out of school, entrepreneurs frustrated by some Government policies and ideas stifled; yet these lots go to other countries and do exploit.
A person who focuses on creating and delivering value has a hard time succeeding in an environment that respects political connections and bribes more than free markets.
The environment has different layers and these layers have their levels of interaction and influence on you. It is possible to create your ideal environment by selecting and identifying with layers that are suitable for your personal development, business and career growth.
Always look for an optimal environment that can support your ambitions and is in line with your values. Your ideal place may be in a big company or a startup, in a technology company or the traditional industry; you may work better as a specialist or a generalist or even an entrepreneur. You may feel better living in a crowded city or far away from the noise and a mass of people. Figure out which environment suits you best.
The good news is that the world has become a global village. Location doesn’t matter as much as it used to, as long as you’re connected to the internet. You can innovate without having to emigrate.
Nevertheless, there are five elements that you should look for in every environment and will contribute to your long-term success. These are the elements that encourage creating, delivering and capturing real value by being human and keeping personal integrity, achieving it with prestige, not dominance. A system that supports these five values still has competition, the world is still tough, but also fair, empathic and collaborative.
Talent
Talent is the basis of everything. Jobs are created where talented people are. Capital follows the talent. A critical mass of talented people creates innovation, out of the box thinking, mutual competition, interdisciplinary dream teams, and so on. You need enough expert minds and complex communication in order to encourage creativity.
You should work in a system full of talent. The measurement for that is quite simple; if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. You want to be in a room of highly talented, educated, skilled and motivated people. Today, teams win, not individuals. Consequently, you want to see your connections as part of a larger team that’s trying to achieve something, not only in your professional life but also in your private one (spouse, family…). Talented teams produce innovation and progress!
Technology
Technology is leverage, technology helps with progress and efficiency. It is the thing that increases your productivity, connectedness, mobility, quality of life, access to information, knowledge, resources and much more.
It is also the thing that brings better transparency and collaboration among talented individuals. The future belongs to the creative class, and the creative class creates and delivers value by using technology. That’s why you should try to work in systems that use, operate, leverage, encourage and invent new technologies.
Tolerance
You want to live in a diverse, heterogenic, integrative environment that’s tolerant and empathic. Innovation means always trying new things. Failure with validated learning is inevitable in the process of inventing new things. And you need the courage to fail. You need an environment that doesn’t judge failure but tolerates it. You also want an environment that’s tolerant towards people experimenting and trying new things.
Transparency
It is simply defined as a lack of hidden agendas and conditions, accompanied by the availability of all information required for collaboration, cooperation, and collective decision-making.
Blaz Kos
It is so important because it’s the essential condition for a free and open exchange, whereby the rules and reasons behind regulatory measures are fair and clear to all participants. Effort is rarely rewarded in a non-transparent system. That’s why talent in systems like that has little value. That’s why you want to work in a transparent system.
You don’t want to keep questioning how much your co-worker earns, you want to know that you’re paid according to your value added and be sure that your co-workers are as well.
Blaz Kos
The key ingredient of transparency is honest, deep and direct communication. So look for systems that encourage transparency and honest communication.
Transcendence
It is about fighting for an important and good cause. Transcendence means having a strong WHY, a WHY that’s stronger than all the obstacles you meet along the way. It is about being in an environment that has a big vision, an environment that encourages you to constantly improve and become your best. It’s about an environment where you fit in, because you know you can develop your talents and feel purpose in life.
It concerns a transcendent environment, where things are not only about you, but about the whole team and the whole ecosystem, even the whole world. It’s about you becoming your best, it’s about you leaving a legacy and it’s about making the world a better place for everyone else. It’s about a system that encourages you to be a good person. People are often not bad and evil, but the system and life situations bring out the worst in them.
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