Your expertise is about to expire.

• Author: Shafer, Ross
• Position: QUICK STUDY

It's scary to think you might actually become obsolete. What's really frightening is to already be obsolete and not even know it. It doesn't matter that you're a leading expert in your field and/or that you've been known for 20 or so years. What does matter is: What are you doing to make sure you're an expert tomorrow--and in 10 years from now?

You already know that technology changes weekly and that today's workforce consists of four distinct generations. And, you heard your competition recently went "global" or has started franchising. Bold growth begs asking bold questions, such as: "Am I still relevant?"

Are you relevant to your colleagues, your customers, your clients and your employees? If you, personally--as well as your company's products and services--aren't important to your core (and vital) constituents, you are destined to experience withering market share and the loss of your most talented staff.

So, what can you do about keeping your edge and continue to grow when the trends seem to be outpacing you?

Attend the 'Wrong' Convention

Besides attending important industry events, consider "crashing" a big general meeting at a hotel near you. Find out what is in town--in a different field than you are in. You can learn something that can revolutionize your business.

As a consultant, this author attends more than 80 such meetings each year. This provides a front-row seat to a myriad of best practices. For example, at a grocery convention, one fact that was gleaned was that by 4 p.m. each day, 42 percent of shoppers still don't know what they want for dinner. Passing that tidbit of information to a chain of successful seafood restaurants, it started running radio ads at 3 p.m. Planting ideas for other meal options in the minds of listeners (when they are starting to think about dinner) has boosted that restaurant's business.

Best Practices Are a Moving Target

What works today might not work tomorrow. Former General Electric Co. CEO Jack Welch said when he ran GE, he would actually penalize a manager for not being forthcoming about a better way he/she was doing things. That policy became an inside joke at GE. A manager would call Jack's office and say, "I think we're onto something really cool in Des Moines. Tell Jack so I don't get caught with it."

Innovative companies like 3M are never satisfied with exceeding sales goals for their current great products. Indeed, 3M takes enormous pride in the fact that 30 percent of its products...