In today's issue
>> A note from Rand
>> Feature Article: Focus More on Strengths
>> Additional Thoughts: Needs, Wants, Values and Priorities
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Note from Rand
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Happy New Year! You've just returned from a holiday break and realized that all the work you put off for the last two weeks actually has to get done. Ouch! There's the old joke: “How do you eat an elephant?” Answer: “One bite at a time.”
I hope you didn't make any New Year's resolutions. I do hope, however, you made some commitments. Resolutions always get broken. The mere word invokes thoughts of lofty aspirations and soon to be unfulfilled goals. The word “commitment” doesn't have the baggage attached. In a couple of months I'm going to write about the power of words to program our psyches and propel action. This is a great example.
This month's lead is about the inattention we give to further cultivating existing personal and organizational strengths. The second piece concerns the relative importance of needs, wants and values. I think you'll find them thought provoking.
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Feature Article: Focus More on Strengths
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A number of years ago, I led the strategy consulting practice for a large consulting firm. Part of that challenge was helping corporate executives think strategically. Strategic thinking and strategic planning are distinct but equally important disciplines. As a practical matter, strategic plans are frequently and inappropriately linear extrapolations of the past. Real strategic thinking requires vision and creativity. It requires “what if” thinking.
In those days, I invariably took clients through a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. I'm sure you've done these. Executives detail their organization's current strengths and weaknesses as well as current and prospective competitive, economic and regulatory opportunities and threats. The ultimate objective is the development of plans that will enable an organization to leverage strengths and improve weaknesses while exploiting opportunities and alleviating threats.
During completion, executives almost always focused on weaknesses, the thought being: “Why should we spend our time doing anything about our strengths? They're already strengths!”
Peter Drucker once said, “The primary job of a manager is to make strength productive.” Most executives spend too much time improving weaknesses and not enough time leveraging strengths. With the velocity of hyper-competition that exists today, by the time an organization builds a new core competence, it'll likely be irrelevant. Additionally, leveraging existing strengths is almost always a less expensive proposition than building or buying new ones.
Today, I spend much of my time helping individuals develop and implement actions that'll propel their own performance. The challenge is similar. People almost always want to focus on improving their weaknesses. I constantly hear comments like the following: “My company's CEO thinks I'm a really great creative thinker. She doesn't believe that my “follow-through” is as good as it needs to be.”
This person's usual proposition would be to craft a development plan focusing on improving follow-through. Here's the problem: Depending on how large the deficit, this person's follow-through skills may only become marginally better, and then only with a lot of work. Both the organization and the individual might both be better off figuring out ways to leverage his strengths.
I'm not advocating the neglect of skill deficiencies. What I am saying is that organizational leaders and their associates generally expend too much energy and money on deficiencies and attend insufficiently to augmenting or leveraging existing capabilities.
Next month, I'll take this examination one step further. Even when people sufficiently acknowledge and exploit their strengths, they rarely integrate an equally important consideration: What are they really passionate about? Being skilled and being excited are individually necessary but insufficient components of personal effectiveness.
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Additional Thoughts: Needs, Wants, Values and Priorities
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A couple of months ago I talked about priorities. I mentioned that I had worked with an executive who stated with certitude that his family was his number one priority. He also lamented the fact that he spent virtually no time with his wife and kids. I responded that priorities are defined by how and where we spend our time and that, by definition, his family was not his number one priority.
I got a lot of e-mail on that one asking for help sorting all of that out. Here's my suggestion:
Over the course of the next month, first develop a list of your needs, wants and values. "What's the difference?" you ask. A need is something you must have in order to be your best, such as time, space, money, love, information, food, etc. A want is something that you relate to by trying to acquire or experience it, such as a car, vacation, a house, a promotion, etc. A value is something that you naturally gravitate to or that is prompted from within and not by needs or wants. The same thing can be a need, want or value for different people or for the same person at different times. Here are some guidelines:
• If there is urgency, it is probably a need.
• If there is a craving or desire, it's probably a want.
• If there is a natural and uncomplicated pull, it's probably a value.
Next, complete a “calendar audit:”
Look at your calendar for the last couple of months. Take every bit of time, personal as well as business, and compare your expenditure of time with your needs, wants and values.
Most people focus an overwhelming portion of their time on the achievement of wants and not much on needs. Here's the deal: Unmet needs are the single greatest source of personal dissatisfaction. You cannot operate with a focus on values with lots of unmet needs.
Last, create objectives and action plans to meet previously unmet needs. Address these one at a time. It will change your life for the better.
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About Rand Golletz
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Rand Golletz is a executive coach and consultant. With more than 25 years in leadership roles, including CEO, chief marketing officer of a Fortune 100 company and international strategy consultant, Rand brings an unparalleled level of business expertise to his profession.
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