What constitutes the personal-mastery development cycle?

In our opinion, the personal-mastery development cycle frames an underlying principle of knowledge maturity, knowledge-worker productivity, and professional excellence.

Our work across many fields and disciplines reveals that the personal-mastery development cycle helps explain the rapid emergence of social networking, activism of trust networks, and new forms of knowledge—what we call open-source insights and best-practice sharing among peer practitioners.

Personal-Mastery Development Cycles Define Several Facets of the Era of Trust Networks

The figures above and to the left depicts the seven phases of the personal-mastery development cycle. The figure above and to the right depicts the five operating states, beginning with formulation and ending with mastery.

The journey toward mastery begins with the discovery or self-disclosure of desires and impulses, culminating in the formulation of an ideal—an inspiring insight and condition of satisfaction, often expressed as “wouldn’t it be cool if…”

As social beings, we move between inner, private world experiences and the external, public sphere of communication and interaction. When we declare an intent, especially when we take a public stand for some future possibility, interesting things happen. We begin to see the world in new and unforeseen ways. We observe interesting patterns and nuance when before we saw nothing but chaos and heard nothing but unintelligible noise.

With unbending intent, enthusiastic expectation, and passionate indifference to the lack of hard evidence in the moment—three essential resources of masters—the road to mastery calls forth a tragic demand. At this point, we recognize a new context while still holding on to the preexisting and innocent worldview.

For this reason, paradox defines the phase of tragic demand and requires that masters-in-process tolerate two absolute truths that nonetheless contradict each other and rise above this conflict with nobility and equanimity.

The journey ahead constitutes a high-level roadmap outlining the basic thrust, contours, actions, and endpoint condition. For many masters-in-process, the journey ahead entails the acceptance that much work lies ahead and the impulse to get on with it.

Crunch time constitutes the third phase on the road to mastery, emphasizing the foundational work of a chosen trade, craft, or discipline. When learning how to windsurf, it may take several frustrating hours before the beginner gets it—the essential posture and rapid micro-realignment of maintaining balance and an upright position on a slippery board and the even more slippery surface of water! With some perseverance, the beginner has the essential “ah-ha of how.”

At that point, crunch time begins; no longer a mystery of what or how, the road to mastery lies before us. In the case of windsurfing, the master-in-process must simply put time on the board, engaging in hour upon hour of intentional practice.

Masters-in-process undertake the work of resource alignment, pulling in just what they need, just in time, and in forms well suited for the tasks at hand.

Resource alignment consists of intentional practice, fast-cycle results-based feedback, and coaching. The master-in-process holds an unbending intent to improve—intentional practice. The master-in-process submits to performance reviews by results and data, using fact-based insights to prompt an even stronger, clearer, crisper, and more cogent desire for improvement. The faster the master-in-process can cycle results and data, the faster the unbending intent to improve attracts powerful new sources of insight: coaches.

Masters of their field often report that everything just lined up: opportunities, resources, advice, and acknowledgement. Many accomplished masters believe that no one individual became their coach, although many masters do have brilliant coaches. Rather, many of our greatest masters got most of what they needed by osmosis, sharing insights, techniques, and philosophies with other peer practitioners.

The resources of masters-in-process coalesce, attaining a critical mass and the birth of commitment. Commitment constitutes the fourth phase on the road to mastery, demonstrating a public and irrevocable stand to see the mastery process to its completion. One concrete demonstration of the commitment to mastery entails the development and use of action plans, checklists, and other process-oriented management systems.

Practice constitutes the fifth phase on the road to mastery, using the action plans, checklists, and other systems to achieve competence and natural rhythms. Practice entails coming up to speed, achieving an elation and momentary sense of true mastery—tantalizing, fleeting, and inspiring. Practice progresses with the uncompromising stand: “I no longer see mistakes. Everything clarifies my desire for excellence. I only see an ever-deepening desire and ever-faster fulfillment of my desire. Competition no longer defines or constrains me; rather, it urges me to reach beyond my conceived limits.”

Habit constitutes the sixth phase on the road to mastery, driving action plans, checklists, and other systems into deep muscle memory. Habit entails the systemic repatterning of social networks and ways of relating with peers. Habit begins the integration of individual practices, group work, and an academy of peers.
Habituation still takes individual work—practice beyond the common, such as Michael Jordan shooting basketballs alone for five hours a day or Bill Gates pounding out one million lines of programming code.

Habituation also consists of group work such as the full-out, nothing-held-back practice games with peers and team members for sports. For business and non-sports or role-based professions, group work entails simulations and group-based clay modeling of an operating principle.

Finally, habituation also consists of academy work—a symposium of peer practitioners that launches into an open-ended inquiry of a subject, conducts performance reviews of real-world events (results and data), or investigates the root causes of a problem condition and evaluates alternative solutions.

Moving beyond habituation entails full participation with peer practitioners with a formally defined discipline. Peer-practitioner disciplines declare a grand thesis, develop a data-processing framework (criteria for what they consider good data and bad data, procedures for performing logical operations on good data, etc.), and evaluate the work of peers within the field.

Mastery constitutes the seventh phase on the road to mastery, demonstrating the full integration of a practice or craft as a fluid, almost whimsical expression of themselves.

OPERATING STATES

Mastery progresses through five operating states, starting with formulation and ending with mastery.

Formulation, the first operating state, describes the condition of a blank slate—no content, no established routines, etc. Think of a bare-wall empty office with no desks, telephones, lights, etc.—survival!

Concentration, the second operating state, describes putting in the foundation and basics: roles and responsibilities, weekly meetings, accounting systems, cold calling, etc.—systems!

Momentum, the third operating state, describes the first real evidence of longer-term success and survival: phones ring, customers want more, talented people want jobs—expansion!

Stability, the fourth operating state, describes the self-generating sustainability and refinement of core processes and culture—taste!

Mastery, the fifth operating state, describes a rarely achieved and seldom maintained condition of cultural innovation and leadership—inspiration!