December 2004
The following article was first published in the Eastern Daily Press' 'The Business' on 7 December 2004
Play to your strengths
At a recent Norfolk Network event, I introduced an old colleague to Mike Linley, a larger-than-life Norfolk character who produces wildlife films for a living. When asked how he got involved in such an interesting career, Mike admitted it was, in some ways, a bit of luck, but was mainly because he had followed his childhood passion for wildlife through his advanced education into pursuing a job which turned that love for living things into a product which allowed others to share his world of animals. Tellingly, he said that he rarely had a day when he didn't arise relishing the thought of what was to come.
I'm sure that many of you know one or two of those lucky people whose work is also their hobby - something they absolutely love doing. You might actually be a little envious, thinking how great it must be, doing something you actually like all day long. It probably doesn't feel like `work' at all. Think about that for a minute - it doesn't feel like work at all. That implies that work isn't intended to be enjoyable, something that you look forward to.
Tragically, there are lots of people owning businesses or working at jobs that don't provide that same `kick' enjoyed by the Mike Linleys of this world. They view work as a `chore' that has to be done, or as time spent in an office or a factory labouring until they can go home. I believe strongly that much of this is due to the very way we recruit, select, train, reward and promote people in most businesses. And it has its roots even further back: the way we educate people.
We teach children lots of facts. We fill them with knowledge. Then we ask them to regurgitate it in the form of examinations. Results of those examinations determine a school's placing in its league table. In businesses, we commonly recruit employees based on their exam results, their knowledge and their skills. We then appraise their performance, looking at how well those skills have been used and highlighting `development opportunities' - a euphemism for things that the employee isn't so good at. Conscientiously, we might provide training in those areas of deficiency, expecting the person to gain the abilities they lack. And, finally, we promote people who do their job well into positions of greater responsibility, and which usually demand different skills than those displayed until then - managing people, for example. If they struggle, we send them on more training - management courses - to fill this gap in their `skill set'.
People learn specific skills over time. They acquire knowledge both at school and by continuing study and curiosity. But, most importantly, every person possesses certain innate talents that are simply part of who they are. Things they are naturally better at than other things - attributes that distinguish them uniquely from everyone else
At that same Norfolk Network event, the fascinating keynote speaker was Andrew Herbert, who runs Microsoft Research Cambridge. He told us that the primary criterion for selecting the location for research facilities world-wide was to go where the `talent pool' was. There is a mass of evidence that managers who understand people's talents and who help them play to their strengths consistently achieve superior performance in terms of profitability, productivity, customer loyalty and satisfaction and staff turnover rates. Next month, we'll explore in more detail the benefits that developing peoples' talents could bring to your business.