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The following is an abstract from the book G2: Building the Next Generation and part of the curriculum of the G2 Leadership Institute
The principle of “focusing on your strengths” is so prevalent in management literature and coaching programs that it has become second nature to business owners. Time and again, we use phrases such as “It’s not my strength” or “I’m not really good at that.” This implies that since a task is not one of our competencies, we should avoid it, outsource it, delegate it, or even sweep it under the carpet. As a result, we rarely undertake any initiatives or projects that we do not perceive as being part of what we do well.
I often wonder if this method of behavior is a sign of sound strategy or mere conformity. After all, how do we acquire new skills if we never go outside of our comfort zone? If we stayed focusing throughout our lives only on things that we did well, we would still be arranging wooden blocks by color like we did in daycare. Clearly, we are capable of developing new skills. Things we are going to be very good at next year require a nascent and awkward effort today. So shouldn’t we spend some time addressing our weaknesses and turning them into strengths rather than always dodging them and doing the same things we have become comfortable doing?
There is a perception we all share that our characters and the skill sets that we rely on for the rest of our careers are developed earlier in life (although it’s unclear when this process is supposed to stop). We assume that our personalities and skills continue to form up to a certain point in life, after which we have little hope of changing and just play with the cards in our hands. In fact, there was a strong scientific following for this theory all the way until the middle of the twentieth century: Scientists believed that we form our major pathways in our childhoods and that our adult brains are more or less fixed. As Nobel Prize–winning neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal wrote in 1928, “In adult centers the nerve paths are something fixed, ended, immutable.”1
As it turns out, this theory is wrong. Not only do we continue to build new pathways throughout our lives, but very importantly, we lose the ones we don’t use. In other words, there is no neurological reason why we can’t develop new skills. Stagnation is merely the result of us choosing not to invest in development. In addition, by not exercising certain skills, we progressively get worse at them.2
What does that mean in practical terms? All professionals should spend at least some of their time and energy focusing on improving their areas of weakness rather than steering clear of them. If you are not good at managing people, perhaps applying a consistent effort to improve your skills in this area would give you success and a better return on investment than hiring a professional manager. If you are not good at business development and sales, perhaps making an effort to be more involved in the new client acquisition process would eventually yield greater results for you and your firm than paying third-party solicitors. If you are not very organized in your work, perhaps disciplining yourself to follow a process would improve your practice and your own abilities more than just giving up and declaring yourself “an artist.”
We often project this fixed-skill-set thinking onto G2 professionals, who are usually very young and certainly not set in their ways. I have frequently overheard such comments made about young professionals at firms. For example, “She is not good with sales” or “He just can’t manage people.” While these statements may be made in a caring voice with the best intentions—“We recognize that he is not good at it, and we will help him work around it”—a better strategy is to challenge G2 professionals to improve in areas where they do not excel and encourage and support them in the process of building new skills.
Doing what feels comfortable and what we are good at is a satisfying and highly successful strategy in the short term. In the long term, however, letting our weaknesses define our strategy is often disastrous. After all, the ability to adapt, change, and acquire new skills is what drives evolution—perhaps in business, as well.
Philip Palaveev is the CEO of the Ensemble Practice LLC. Philip is an industry consultant, author of the books G2:Building the Next Generation and The Ensemble Practice and the lead faculty member for the G2 Leadership Institute.
Philip is speaking next on this topic at AICPA Personal Financial Planning Summit – January 8 -10, 2018 Terranea | Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
1 Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Degeneration and Regeneration in the Nervous System (New York: Oxford Press, 1991 reprint edition).
2 The theory of brain plasticity is well documented and accepted and covered in many books, including Norman Doiges, The Brain That Changes Itself (New York: Penguin, 2007).
Read more articles by Philp Palaveev
