The Power of Learning

Source: CPA Success

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from a blog entry by Bill Sheridan.

Here's the funny thing about great ideas: Once you hear one, you can't shake it. You start to hear it all the time.

For proof, I give you Dan Pink.

The best-selling author has written a new book called "To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others." In it, he makes the case that, no matter how we make a living, we all spend most of our time trying to sell something -- a product, a service, an idea, a motivation.

Dan's keynote at the 2012 ASAE Annual Meeting centered on that idea, and I followed up with a phone interview and podcast. I asked Dan what he believes is the most important skill in today's rapidly changing environment. His answer?

"My first instinct is adaptability," he said. "You need to be able to change and adapt. I think people have difficulty with that. Dealing with ambiguity has become profoundly important today. . . . "

MACPA Executive Director Tom Hood has been telling anything that breathes lately that the most important skill we can possess in this rapidly changing world is the ability to learn new skills. Tom even has a formula for it: L > C. In order to flourish, your rate of learning must be greater than the rate of change.

Great idea, right? This has all kinds of implications for CPAs:

• Learning new skills means devoting yourself to the concept of lifelong learning.
• Most learning is social in nature. We learn almost everything not in a classroom, but from our day-to-day interactions with other people.
• Social media enhances our ability to learn from others exponentially.

For the complete blog entry, read "Today's Top Skills: Adaptability. Lifelong Learning."

From CPA Success, the blog of the Maryland Association of CPAs, November 1, 2012, http://www.cpasuccess.com.