Premise
In a recent post, Mike Shipulski, talks about how the core strength of a business usually also becomes the biggest weakness for that business, as it ends up consuming all of the resources to optimise its growth and starves all new ideas for resources.
I recommend that you read the entire post here.
I reckon that this hypothesis holds true for all of us as individuals and as leaders as well. When put in a corner or when we are challenged, we typically fall back to the strategies that have worked well for us in the past.
In some cases, these might still work and get us out of the tight spot, but at some point in time, we will end up in a situation where relying on our strength will not get us the desired result. If we continue to do the same thing, it might even harm or even actively create setbacks that will make it harder to achieve our goals.
When could Strength = Weakness
The question then is how do we identify situations where our strengths are no longer our strengths and could potentially have become our weakness.
Here are a few ways:
When roles change
Typically, this happens when we grow or move into a different kind of role. What worked for us when we were individual contributor doesn’t necessarily work when we are a manager. What worked for us when we were managing a team doesn’t necessarily work when we are managing a set of managers. What worked for us when we were managing mangers, doesn’t necessarily work when we are trying to lead them.
When situations change
When we come across a novel situation, something that we have never come across before, we need to be aware that our strengths might not necessarily be our strengths. We need to assess the situation and act according to what the situation demands. Experimentation with new ideas would be better than just falling back on our regular way of solving challenges, whatever that be.
When Players Change
Every time there is a significant change in the people that we work with or work against, we need to be aware that our strengths might not be our strengths anymore. Again, we need to be able to experiment and bring in a slew of new ways of addressing the challenges that we face.
In conclusion:
The question then we need to address is how to develop this ability to experiment. I believe that we need to continually experiment, even in known situations, when working with the known players and when our role hasn’t changed yet.
We need to continue to experiment and develop new ways of solving problems all the time. Yes, sometimes, this might be a bit frustrating to try a new way of looking at problems, a new way of solving problems that we know exactly how to solve.
But we still need to do that, until the ability to be flexible in our approach, in our ability to see differently and our ability to solve differently becomes our core strength. This agility is what we need to not just survive but to thrive in a wildly VUCA world that we live in.
