Recognizing your strengths and weaknesses is crucial to your success. Whether you are starting a business, trying to take your existing business to the next level or considering joining a company, you need to leverage your strengths and shore up your weaknesses. To do so, you need to be honest with yourself, leave your ego at the door and learn to trust and empower others.
I recognize that maintaining things is not one of my strong suits. Building something is a much more fulfilling expression of my creativity and a far better use of my particular skill sets. Once I have built something, I like to move on to the next thing. For me, how long that cycle takes has everything to do with creativity. So long as there is a creative element to what I am doing, I will embrace it with great passion. The moment that ceases to exist is the time for me to move on.
I am currently building a new entity. I can’t tell you too much about it just yet but I can use part of the team building process to illustrate the value of knowing your strengths and weaknesses. In building this new venture, I have identified it’s major key ingredients. Here are a few of them.
- Drive & Vision
- Sales & Marketing
- Administration
- Human Resources
- Finances
- Technology
- Branding
- Public & Media Relations
- Social Media Strategy
Because of my background, I have some strength in all of these areas, but I am by no means an expert at all of them. Vision, drive, sales and marketing are my strong suits. And so, in this new venture, I will take the roles of President and CEO and handle the vision & drive components. From a thousand feet up, I know exactly ‘what’ needs to be done. I see the big picture. When I start to drill down to the specific details of ‘how’ each task needs to be implemented, my weaknesses become apparent.
I will give you three examples:
We will need a shareholders agreement. Having owned a few companies, I know a little bit about this subject. Enough to know its clearly not one of my strong points. I could read a few books, speak with a few accountants and handle it myself but how good a job would I do? Would I properly factor for growth or for an eventual sale of the company? Would it ensure that we always have functional control of the company? Would the share structures allow for incentive and reward through stock options? It is far better to empower someone who has experience and knowledge in this area to make these critical decisions.
What about technology? I have lots of experience in this area, but I am by no means an expert in some critical areas. Sure, I can build websites, deploy WordPress, record and engineer music so I suppose I fit the label of ‘power user’. My synapses get a bit foggy when it comes to what’s going on under the hood on the server side of things, and what the requirements are to scale a system to handle millions and millions of hits and page views without crashing. Could I figure that out? Probably, but I’d make mistakes. Could I recover from those mistakes, yes, but at what cost?
On the public relations and communications side of things, I also have some strength. I can write and have been told I am pretty good at it. I have excellent people skills and when I am passionate about something, I am an engaging speaker. However, we need to make sure that the message we give to the market is properly distilled and conveys ‘exactly’ what we want that market to hear. If I imagine a writer as a center on an NHL hockey team, I am at best a 4th line center. I want a first line center to lead the charge because that’s the best thing for the company.
I have built an excellent team and
each member of that team is empowered to do what they do best.
Of course, I will have input in the decision-making processes as will everyone else. Earlier, I mentioned I would handle the vision and drive components, but even though that will be my primary responsibility, I won’t do it in a vacuum. To do so would only deprive me from leveraging our collective knowledge, experience and instincts.
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Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and the teacher of Alexander the Great. He knew a thing or two and he had this to say:Â
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” |
Whenever I have experienced this dynamic in a team, great things have happened. Regardless of the size of your team or the magnitude of your venture, remember to:
- Be honest with yourself and recognize your weaknesses
- Leave your ego at the door
- Leverage your strengths
- Trust and empower others to do what they do best
- Work as a team
Doing so will allow you to reach the highest levels of excellence!
Photo Credits
Team pictures from MS Word Clip Art Collection
Aristotle – Wikipedia Public Domain
© Gil Namur, 2009
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