By
Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
Should you play to your strengths or shore-up your weaknesses? If you
pose this question to a group of professionals some will answer play to
your strengths, some will answer shore-up weaknesses and others will
answer both.
The truth is that they are all correct to a degree.
The real answer lies in understanding context, environment and
priority. Continued professional growth leading to increased
performance over time is what separates the good from the great.Rapidly
evolving marketsdemand that successfulbusiness peoplehave afluidity in
their approach to professional development.
However, many executives and entrepreneurs focus on the wrong areas, at
the wrong times and for the wrong reasons in their efforts to refine
and improve their skill sets.In this week's column I'll share insights
on how to prioritize your professional development efforts.
Focus needs to be applied to areas that can have the
greatest impact on your performance. It is nothing short of foolishness
to waste time, energy or capital on improving weaknesses that don’t
matter. Unless a weakness createsa barrier between you and the
completion of your mission, or impedes you from utilizing your
strengths it is not really a weakness that needs to be addressed.
As an example, if you are a CEO with poor
interpersonal communication skills that prohibit you from being able
toarticulately and persuasivelysell the corporate vision, you should
immediately go to work on improving your communication. By way of
contrast, if you're a CEO who has poor administrative skills, who
cares? It is likely that as CEO you have unfettered access to
administrative support to which you can delegate activities that are
not highest and best use to begin with, so why worry about how fast you
keyboard or work the scanner?
It is critical that you understandit takes much more
dedication, determination and energy to go frompoor to mediocre thanit
does to move from good to great.It is also important to check your
motivation and interest level in determining which areas you desire to
improve upon. If you’re not passionate about something itisdifficult to
be motivated and without motivation it is virtually impossible to
maintain any interest.As a busy executiveor entrepreneur you only have
so much time in a day so don't waste it on areas thatdo not add value
or create leverage.
Those of you who are familiarwith my philosophy
understand the importance offocus. Howeveras important as focus is, of
equal or greater importance is what you chooseto focus on.As mentioned
above focus needs to be brought to bear on issues that stand between
where you are and where you want to go.Understanding how to identify
barriers is mission critical to your ability to succeed in business.
Barriers are best identified as things that can be removed though
acquiring knowledge through training, continuing education,
self-learning, and such; by improving skills with training, practice,
focus; and by gaining experience by broadening roles, having more
tenure, being mentored, etc.
Bottom line, then, is that focused professional development requires:
1) Motivation to improve
2) the ability toidentifybarriers
3)determining the proper method of removing the barrierby improving skill sets, acquiring knowledge or gaining experience
4)Conducting a cost/benefit and risk/reward assessment
to determine whether the barrier needs to be addressed immediately,
over the mid-range or thelong-term.
If you wish to send a management question to Mr. Myatt, his email
address is managementmatters.myatt@cpngroup.com. The opinions expressed
in this column are those of the author and do not represent those of
CPN.
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