Searching for opportunities

Consciously identifying courses of action that are worth pursuing.

Opportunities have an uncanny knack of only revealing themselves after the event. With the benefit of hindsight an opportunity becomes apparent but at the time it was missed. This applies both to business and to learning opportunities. It is because opportunities are by their very nature elusive that they need to be consciously and deliberately searched for.

Edward de Bono defines an opportunity as 'a course of action that is possible and obviously worth pursuing'. He claims it is the possibility of an opportunity that distinguishes it from wishful thinking. He also argues that there are always more urgent, pressing things to do than look for opportunities and that it is therefore necessary to allocate time for a systematic search.

Exactly the same rationale can be applied to learning opportunities; they only exist once they have been seen and they will only be seen if they are looked for. The trick is to stop merely seeing things to do and instead have double vision and see things to do and learn from. In a sense, everything that happens, nice or nasty, planned or unplanned, trivial or substantial, is a learning opportunity. The main growth area for learning and development is to couple work-based activities with learning rather than to think of them as separate and distinct activities.

You can actively encourage your people to become learning opportunists by instigating regular opportunity searches. Twice a year get each of your subordinates to come up with, say, three ideas for learning opportunities for themselves and three for other people. Each idea must have a description of the potential benefits envisaged both for the person and for the organisation. The significant difference between the ideas for 'self' and 'others' is that all the self ones must be opportunities the person has it in their power to do. The ideas for others, on the other hand, ensure you get a steady stream of suggestions and you can decide which, if any, to implement. Hopefully the suggestions that are forthcoming will complement and/or add to many of the ideas in this book.

Ideas which are viable can be built into people's personal development plans or learning contracts (see Learning contracts) or form the basis for a self-development initiative (see Self-development). Needless to say, the peril to guard against is that of dreaming up opportunities that no-one is able or willing to implement.

For additional inspiration read Edward de Bono's book 'Opportunities' published by Pelican Books. All he has to say about business opportunities applies to learning opportunities. Opportunities are there for the taking but only if we spot them.