Why is Professional Acumen Important?
These are the skills needed to consistently earn Respect

What is Professional Acumen?
Learning to “consistently” express Common Sense in enterprise

Learn how to teach Professional Acumen,
to develop a community of Shared Respect

Professionalism Basics
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.Professionalism

“Innate Sense” is the problem solving capacity of an isolated individual. “Professional Acumen” is the problem solving capacity of a social individual; working with others.

Consistently expressing Professional Acumen is critical to develop and maintain technology; almost everything manufactured.

We learn to consistently express common sense through a diversity of audited and mentored experiences. Most commonly from our parents and many thousands of learning events during childhood, and continuing into our adult life for over 20 years.

Common Sense can obviously be taught, but how can the process be accelerated so it is consistently expressed, and can be usefully taught in a shorter time in schools, in the workplace, and at home?.

Students unable to consistently express common sense are unable to anticipate actions that will permanently destroy their future; addictions, related brain damage, resulting in being labelled with distrust and shunned. Teaching Professional Acumen builds a person’s ability to express common sense consistently in diverse group activities.

Professionalism is widely recognized as a necessity in being trustworthy. But most people have no overall understanding of what is actually required to express Professional Acumen.

Lack of Professionalism ALWAYS allows corruption to infiltrate leadership.

Groups not understanding the foundations of Professional Acumen, and related shared Respect; unwillingly allow Corruption to infiltrate and destroy group passion in serving Group purposes.

Members of Organizations (employees, managers, board members, owners, stockholders) who do not understand the foundations of Professional Acumen cannot recognize Corruption, and their related opportunities are stolen from them. They feel powerless and allow for sustained harm to the organization and themselves.

Corruption ALWAYS stagnates, and even stifles, organization growth.

What is Professional Acumen

“Professional Acumen” is group based learning & sharing of social, emotional, and logical skills used to identify and fill gaps in consequences, to achieve group goals; resulting in consistently earning and sharing trust, and related conveyed respect.

The most common shortcoming in all group projects and processes, is an inability to identify gaps in understanding to attain and sustain productive outcomes. The most common shortcoming of individuals in a group, is self-deception and the related lack of effort to identify and fill the gaps.

People who possess Professional Acumen, are introspective, and are life-long learners. Progressively becoming more effective than they were before. They choose what they need to learn, find “useful” mentors and “useful” associates, learn to work productively with others, identify access to resources (jobs, investment, mentored access to resources …), take notes, plan, set priorities, limit the unimportant use of time, control risks, protect themselves (useful social relationships, health, productive careers, …), adapt, act, and become an expert towards having the life they planned. As goals change, new gaps are created and need to be identified; learning to fill those gaps is required.

A healthy brain practiced in problem solving is built, not born.

A short attention span, avoiding engagement, lack of useful priorities, malnutrition, and dysfunctional social communications, … condemns a person in the United States to simple professions, high risks, and being locked away from significant opportunities.

Recognizing Corruption

Professionalism requires recognizing corruption so that wasted efforts are minimized. As examples,

“Arrogance” (the loathing of others) is confused as confidence. Arrogant people have no intention to help anyone except where they must. As a result they keep other professionally at a distance.
- Arrogant administrators tend to choose the less-competent managers when hiring new positions to protect their own positions from being at risk.
  - Less-competent managers don’t create work to grow productivity.
- Get a letter of recommendation from supervisors long before you plan to find another job. They typically want you to write your own Letter of Recommendation that they will sign if they think it is reasonable.
  - Site your development goals. “… is working towards …”
- Being productive requires taking minor risks to meet goals. Eventually, a failed attempt will result. Arrogant management tend to slander the failings of productive staff to distract others from their own lack of efforts.
“Boredom” is directly related to fostering corruption
- Boredom results from “Practiced Avoidance”
- If staff as a group are bored, growth and innovation are not supported
  - Fear of failure, and risk of consequences
  - Lack of reasonable mentoring
To work under management that stifles subordinate growth is counter-productive; the company cannot grow access to new opportunities
- Arrogant managers expect staff to develop themselves completely on their own time, resulting in burnout; no family/work balance
Staff that consistently avoid assigned work are a burden to others
- A smile is no substitute to helping the company grow
- Management that unreasonably assigns work without support, are incompetent
  - Often corruption assigns unproductive busy-work to their most competent personnel, while favoring a few without expectations to be productive. Creating a corrupt system and entrenching their own position.
- Strategic Creation of resources to build everyone’s skill set promotes practiced engagement instead of practiced avoidance
  - Stifling staff skills development is an indication of a business without growth; done through neglect or active discrimination
- Verbose training with useless outcomes wastes human resources
  - Useful training goals should result in a notebook page of valuable resources; something that can be referred to for retainment
Corruption creates micromanagement and unrealistic expectations
False Praise promotes a skill of useful deception
not trying to find and fill gaps in understanding related to “productive” goals

Examples not related to corruption:

envy of a person’s abilities is indirectly an indicator of areas needing personal development
gaps in understanding

Those who fail to act professionally, instead attempt to unjustly influence allocations through mindless drama, or gets involved with support of an administrative mafia (as few as two people, as large as thousands). This tears apart growth opportunities of the organization, but the undeserving tend to profit by entrenching themselves. They are under-producers that tend to create waste and abuse organization resources. Corrupt leadership promotes the weak and incompetent, so their own position is not questioned. The intents of the organization suffers from a lack of broad mission serving insight.

Clubs are prone to administrative corruption. Members are placated and abused, while leadership abuses resources for their own use. Enforcers are appointed to keep vocal members in-line. There are methods for members to regain control of their organization, but efforts require a team skilled in Professionalism.

All traditional governments were based in creating Administrative Mafia; kingdoms, cartels, plantation owners and slavery, indentured servants, war lords … Mafia and their enforcers are not new. Being able to fight against them has been elusive. Often the force that dislodges one mafia, is allocated by a different corrupt group.

Governments based on a specific religion, attempted to introduce an Ethics Oversight Department (religious ethics police), but they allowed Administrative Mafia to subvert oversight and instead entrenched corruption . Both corrupting support for the Religion, as a legitimate religion, and corrupting Government.

Big problems can be broken down into smaller goals. Incrementally change the foundation of a problem, and the problem must shift. How can you make a difference? Identify gaps in what you do not understand, research online sources, seek out mentors, identify stakeholders that can make a difference, identify consequences, set priorities based on incremental successes, get empowered and recognize your own successes, assess consequences as you go, and learn to adapt. Taking a job working within the system you are trying to change, may provide the resources and access needed to make incremental changes; there is no one way.

Learning from others is a supplement to learning on your own; not a replacement.

For more information about Ethics Oversight throughout United States government, do a search for “Office of the Inspector General”. To find reports of misconduct https://oic.justice.gov

In almost every endeavor, there are regulations and laws that can have an impact on what we want to accomplish. These same agencies often have resources for helping you remain compliant. You don’t have to figure it out on your own.

Protecting One’s Own Future

“Innate Sense” depends solely on the underlying systems supporting the nervous system to support problem solving; the health of our brain. Nothing is more important to an individual’s future. A damaged brain makes life far more difficult.

Brain Damaged people from drug abuse, malnutrition, Alzheimer’s created from environmental, physical accident, or self-induced poor judgement, often become hospitalized, homeless, or isolated.

Because the brain is damaged, consistently expressing Common Sense as Professional Acumen is difficult, and perhaps impossible. Opportunities to earn Respect are rarely offered to the homeless related to job opportunities, for rational reasons based on evaluated risks.

Family learns from disheartening experience, that they must protect themselves from their own out-of-control family members. Their own future otherwise becomes filled with unreasonable risks; their hard earned Respect and resources leak away.

Can a large number of homeless obtain practiced experience in working productively in a workplace, or be mentored in maintaining an online business?

What is required to be done in the extreme, is needed to nudge systems of reasoning people who are working together.

Practiced Experience in expressing Worthiness of Respect

Offering a position to a person who has not diversely grown themselves in similar positions is harmful to them and the organization. They only know how to put a square peg in a square hole. They don’t have the practiced experience to change the shape of the hole to fit a diversity of pegs.

A person must become worthy of being offered a significant opportunity. Go to https://indeed.com or https://monster.com and search for words that are involved with any passion you have.; including entrepreneurial opportunities. That is a starting point for learning about available significant opportunities.

A person learns through Practiced Experience, to:

work with others productively
consistently earn respect
recognize relationships that interfere with group productivity.

Tool: Self-Respect

Successful people develop tools to achieve goals.

The brain is easily damaged. Children need to understand that they need to consistently, without lapse, protect their own brain. Just as important as having a healthy heart, and healthy body, everyone needs to practice taking care of their brain. Body, heart, and mind work together to make success in a group, more easily achieved. Practiced Experience in remaining healthy, follows us throughout our entire lives.

Failure to keep ourselves healthy, also follows us throughout our entire lives.

We need good health to consistently express ourselves accurately, truthfully, and without exaggeration or drama. Memory and mental stamina depend upon lean protein, B-vitamins, calcium, water, other low carb nutrients, sleep, physical activity, and a means to provide a consistent supply.

When working with others as a professional, your body language (part of Social and Emotional Acumen) needs to accurately indicate the confidence level in what you convey to people you engage. This gives others a chance to contribute in areas where they may have some experience.

By accurately conveying confidence in group projects, this tool incorporates diversity, and greatly enhances productivity. People skilled in more accurately conveying self-respect are valuable team members.

People that convey confidence at all times are con-artists or brain damaged with narcissism. No one always knows the best path forward. Arrogance is often mistaken for confidence. Arrogance is the Loathing of Others. Arrogant people delegate and have no intention to be part of a team. A narcissist led team is a dictatorship. Often times a narcissist will socially punish a person that presents ideas for improvement.

Team efforts (multiple brains and physical abilities) almost always result in better outcomes, than a micromanaged project directed solely by one person.

Tool: Engagement

Schools in-general and Employers in the workplace, do NOT understand how common sense relates to Professionalism. Critical Thinking, Social Acumen, and Emotional Acumen all require being learned. No one is born with these skills.

Schools unknowing of how to teach children the needed skills of Professional Acumen, have children that develop unnoticed self-deception, that prevents them from recognizing and pursuing needed priorities.

When the traits of Professional Acumen are known, and can be taught. Acting with Professional Acumen can be developed, reinforced, expected, … and appreciated. Professional Acumen provides the individual with the tools to become an expert in anything consistently pursued.

As an example: A student of 15 started and ran their own eBay business making near $1000 a month in their spare time; mentored by their father. They went on to get a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering. Then without a gap, went on to get their law degree. Last known, they were a Contracts Attorney in Washington, D.C.. Successes lead to new opportunities.

Habitual Avoidance can lead to Depression

Habitual Avoidance can lead to a type of depression. Where a person expects others to act to meet their expectations without reasonable measurable justification. We can expect reasonable activities and social interactions for ourselves. We can only identify a limited risk and value assessment of others. People are all diversely different. No one has the capacity to act as you believe they should. Have unreasonable social expectations can lead to a type of depression from habitual avoidance of social opportunities.

A person can have useful expectations for themselves, but they cannot have expectations for other people’s behavior. We provide incremental opportunities for others to determine limited useful experiences with each other. To find limits of trust that allow for friendship/association without risking excessive harm to ourselves.

Children practice acts of Avoidance originating in self-deception, unrealistic expectations, and an avoidance in seeking “useful” mentors. The unaccomplished are easier to relate to; their minds work in small loops of circular logic, social venues of avoidance, and emotional expressions based more in drama and concealment, than useful body language. Small incremental failed outcomes create expected Frustration, that without mentors and lacking practiced experience in realizing frustration is temporary, reinforces a Lack of Commitment.

Practiced acts of Avoidance and frequent distractions toward Useless Commitments, often originate in self-deception and harmful unqualified expectations of others. People that practice Avoidance and following useless distractions, find it difficult to work towards useful goals, to set priorities, to make useful changes for themselves, and to “usefully” adapt to changing situations.

Pursuing wasteful and/or destructive outcomes that are easily attained, reinforces practiced acts of Avoidance. Avoidance is a difficult habit (loop of behavior) that is hard to recognize and break without help from useful mentors.

Useful Mentor: A person or resource that helps you make progress toward your useful goal. Helping you to identify and fill gaps and achieve incremental successes. The position of Mentor has expectations, not the person themselves. Sometimes many people and resources (internet search and forums) are needed to provide mentoring environment for achieving a particular goal.

There are expectations for Useful Mentors:

They cannot practice Avoidance.
You as a Mentee must teach yourself the language relationships that the Mentoring environment uses (Google and related social groups).
As a Mentee you cannot practice self deception and believe that you Know Anything. All useful information is like two different boxes of puzzle pieces mixed together. What you piece together will probably be different than expected as pieces start fitting together.
As a Mentee the most important purpose of a Mentor is to find major gaps in your understanding towards achieving a goal. If you can identify a gap, you can actively learn about it on your own. How the gap connect things together.
Mentors are for creating Moments of Inspiration. A few seconds of fleeting insight. Always carry a notebook and pen, to capture in those few seconds your otherwise lost genius.
Mentors don’t solve problems, they are imperfect and only help point within their useful experience. If their experience does not show sustainable success, their insights are more valuable for identifying modes of failure. Risks and related gaps to study.
Useful Mentors cannot be held accountable for your own gaps in understanding, or your unwillingness to actively investigate for yourself.

Today we carry cellphones; powerful computers. We can research other people’s experiences quickly.

Boredom results from practiced acts of Avoidance. There is always something to do. Both of the following can provide an enhanced quality of life by choosing to do something. To build a base of experiences.

Instead of Frustration being an indicator of a gap that needs to be identified and orchestrating learning to fill those gaps, weak minds choose self-destructive Avoidance. Practiced Experience in learning how to convert Frustration into incremental accomplishments/successes, trains the brain to engage a long stream of Frustrations, Engagements, and Successes to attain Useful Goals.

Frustration to a trained mind, is a precursor to another Success.

Tool: Recognizing Useful Priorities

Useful priorities require being able to convert Frustration into Seeking and Learning to support a pathway leading to a Goal. Children trained to recognize self-deception, and that actively learn to overcome Avoidance, engage seeking useful outcomes intentionally.

Homework is not so important to learn what is taught, so much as to have ingrained in their brain “How to Learn and Apply”; the foundations of Research and Development. Reinforced (Audited and Mentored) learning of diverse subjects contributes to thinking without self-deception. Relating measurable outcomes to intentional diversely applied efforts.

Children without developed skills in Professional Acumen can be lured into drug addictions that permanently damages their brain and prevents being able to earn respect; their Innate Sense damaged.

No human brain is physically identical. The brain grows and perishes, builds new tissues, and tissues are metabolized, neural pathways form, and others perish. The brain evolves through diverse pathways. Some evolve to better support useful outcomes, some evolve to support different outcomes, and some suffer or perish if they fail to usefully evolve practiced experiences.

The brain physically changes to learn, and evolve what already is learned to support other more complicated outcomes. Trial and Error. We learn from our mistakes. We can also learn useless things like Avoidance.

The more practiced experience in projects, the more complicated the pathway to a goal can be anticipated. Building trust in useful groups, often means taking complex journeys toward significant goals, doesn’t need to be lonely. Efforts can often be shared, to realize mutual benefits.

Set Priorities, write them down, and take credit when they get accomplished. Reinforce Engagement, and subsequent Successes.

Take the time after a Success, to identify the priorities that contributed to outcomes. These priorities may serve well to support future goals.

Overcoming Personal Challenges

Professional Acumen can be taught. As examples, people with Obsessive-Compulsive disorder (OCD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can be taught to have more control in their lives.

Our brain learns from reinforcement. “Conditioned Response” activates learned behaviors. Boredom and Useless Outcomes are key indicators of Avoidance.

People with OCD and ADHD often repeat self-destructive habits. Self-destructive habits also include avoidance of useful behaviors, like Superstition. A feeling that something bad might happen if something useless is not repeated. Too much is better than just enough. The inflicted are usually intelligent and know the habits are self-destructive. To a lesser degree, most people engage in these self-destructive habits.

Reprogramming Avoidance behaviors to Engagement behaviors. Superstition is strongly related to dysfunctional Avoidance behaviors; initiating well known easy acts instead of using less practiced, but more productive learned skills.

Tool: Remind Yourself of Priorities

Make a list of 10 useful activities for the next day; each activity should be broken down into acts that can reasonably be completed. Prioritize based on critical needs deadlines. During the next day, whenever a destructive habit is noticed, mark what you were doing on a Post-It to mark where you left off. Immediately engage something on the list that needed to get done. Repeat until activities are completed.

There should only be at most 10 items on Post-Its, today’s activities. Other activities are deferred to tomorrow’s list.

What is important is to recognize a destructive behavior like Avoidance due to Superstition, or Avoidance due to the mind wandering, and immediately engage a confined package of useful acts. Getting things done everyday.

Tool: Engage with Intent

People with ADHD often have difficulty getting information out of reading. When reading is disrupted by daydreaming, put a Post-it on the page being read. Make a tally mark on the Post-It whenever daydreaming is realized, and go back to reading. Over time, the mind notices the marks and more reading is done and less daydreaming.

Tool: Broaden Insights

Learning to think inclusively, expands our sphere of influence beyond our own abilities.

Through diverse physical interactions between our healthy mind and senses, our probability of success in achieving desired useful outcomes grows. Including others constructively, further increases probability of success. Identifying gaps of knowledge leading to desired consequences is extraordinarily difficult using only one’s own Innate Sense. There is one of you interested in getting something accomplished. A team or company is many people working together to develop a mission. More people, broader experiences, … less unforeseen gaps.

Professional Acumen is a set of mutually consistent relationships, that allows problem solving skills of many people, to interact in a way that benefits everyone. A larger diversity of efforts is accomplished than what could be accomplished individually.

Professional Acumen when taught, reinforces evolving Engagement. Filling gaps in what we don’t know. Discovering what we had not noticed. Reducing risks related to losses; like wasted effort, unanticipated harm, loss of respect…

To realize the importance of Professional Acumen, look at anything you purchased, and realistically assess how long it would take, for you to build one item from scratch without the resources or help of any other person.

Professional Acumen are the skills we develop, to consistently earn conveyed trust, in our ability to usefully contribute towards useful outcomes.

People at the very core of all their thoughts, are fundamentally self-serving. Neither good nor bad, just human nature. Professional Acumen allows us to attain altruistic outcomes that benefit others, as well as ourselves.

When we attempt to deceive, we earn distrust. The “socially self-serving” (those without the ability to interact with Professional Acumen) destroy systems of developed trust, destroys the ability to build as a team, and destroys security for life itself. Overall useful development stagnates, for the socially self-serving and those around them. The socially self-serving have a narrow vision that does not grow exponentially.

Organization Board Members are at times selected for their loyalty to a recognized authoritarian figure, a person who could intentionally harm them. A Hobby Club mentality. As such, the Board Members are selected for their incompetent quiet micromanaged nature. They stagnate professional organization development. Where competent Board Members would otherwise originate diverse and broadly considered seeds of professional growth; that would broadly benefit everyone.

Highly developed skills of Professional Acumen can elude the highest levels of administration. So it is no wonder that development of Professional Acumen skills is not well practiced everywhere.

Professional Acumen allows altruistic tendencies to emerge. Those better skilled in consistently expressing Professional Acumen, build security for themselves, family, coworkers, everyone; to include those not yet born.

Science is approaching the capability of manipulating space/time physics through quantum computers entangled with local relativity. Will complacency in the broad teaching of common sense allow for the corrupt to limit humanity narrowly, and destroy humanity broadly?

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Method to Teach Professional Acumen
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Pages

How do I teach common sense ?
What is common sense ?
What is corruption ?
Why is corruption so common ?
Who knows what common sense is ?
What tools are there to teach common sense ?
Where can I find a method to teach common sense ?
Why is common sense uncommon ?
Why isn’t common sense taught in public schools ?
How can I teach my children common sense ?
I have no common sense .
You have no common sense .
If it weren’t for your pocket change, you’ld have no sense at all .
Professional Acumen, so rare it should be considered a superpower .
Teaching common sense in school .
What is professionalism ?
How can I learn professional acumen ?
Teaming versus Mafia ?
What is corruption ?
How do I earn Respect ?
Lean Manufacturing through Mission Priorities?
Eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse ?

Why is Professional Acumen Important? These are the skills needed to consistently earn Respect