It’s easy to confuse advancement and development
In today’s yoga class, our teacher spoke about the difference between development and advancement.
When he posed the question to us, everyone was stumped.
In his own way, he was drawing a parallel with yoga and how regular practice helps us advance.
But it’s a very valid question.
It’s easy to confuse advancement and development.
At the face of it, we think of development in physical terms — bridges, roads, flyovers, metro trains, super-fast trains, smart-cities (whatever that means).
We think of advancement as better technologies that have in some way made life simpler and better.
To advance means to get better at something, move to the next level, become more knowledgeable. Taking advanced classes of any kind means a higher degree of proficiency is required for you to take the course.
At some level, there is an overlap.
To advance, you have to work on your development. Ever wonder why it’s called personality development and not personality advancement?
Without advancement, development becomes meaningless.
Let’s look at this in the context of a workplace.
An office can have all the modern infrastructure that makes it look super-cool from the outside. Pool and foosball tables, bean bags, a fancy cafeteria, the latest iMacs and everything that goes into making an office hip and millennial-friendly.
How much impact do you think all this development will have if employees aren’t given clear directions and are running helter-skelter every time a project comes in, causing everyone a great deal of stress. Unless they discover a better way of working, all the luxuries that they have been afforded will come to naught.
Seen in this context, better office space is a sign of development and a better way of working is a sign of advancement.
The Ready is an organization that helps companies discover a better way of working. Founder Aaron Dignan’s book Brave New Work delves into how organizations the world over are changing the way they look at autonomy, appraisals, work-life balance, transparency, and managing teams. Most of these call for a paradigm shift in how to approach work itself.
In a sense, advancement means seeing things from a different vantage point, with a fresh pair of eyes. A person who makes radical changes in their diet and exercise routine based on some information that they have received has in some way advanced to the next level of healthy living. An organization that changes how they track an employee’s contribution has advanced from merely seeing how many hours they spend in the office to measuring their contribution.
This doesn’t just apply to work. It applies to any area in which you are striving to make genuine progress. A costly pair of shoes and an overpriced fitness band aren’t going to make you run better. Managing your energy, nutrition, and gait will. That only comes from constantly doing something and finding ways to get better at it.
Development without true advancement can be empty and soulless. A fresh coat of paint, a bridge built without planning, a system installed without planning, all of these look like progress but are mostly eyewashes.
On the other hand, true advancement can bring about a radically better way of doing something.
