I once heard Brian Tracy challenge us to ask, “What kind of team would it be if everyone on it was just like me?” If everyone on your team was just like you, would each member say, “I'm getting better every day”?

Well, you say, that depends on the day. And as we enter the heart of open enrollment season, our temptation is to play it like so many in our industry. We'll save the getting better for after the season. There will be time in January for reading and listening and watching those things that help us get better, right? That's what most of your peers do because it's just crazy right now. But you aren't like your peers.

For one, you're reading this column. You're in search of a nugget of wisdom that will help you improve professionally and/or personally, even though it's November. Anybody can read in July, when half the world is on vacation. It takes purposeful intent to do it in November.

And it's vital because if we're not getting better every day, we're getting worse. Studies show that the majority of adults experience a steep drop in learning after their formal education ends. We get busy with children and work, and either don't make the time or are simply too tired to continue growing.

But we're better than that. We work at getting better every day. We have a reading list—fiction and nonfiction alike—and we read at least a chapter a day. We have a listening library and we listen while we drive between appointments or walk on the treadmill. We take notes and we share the ideas with our teammates so we all get better.

I know the schedule is getting crazy and PPACA is still adding wrinkles, but let's agree right now to make “getting better every day” our motto this season. So if everybody on our team was just like us, the experts could say, “This is a team poised for a championship.”