Don’t be a “Jack of all Trades”

Don’t be a “Jack of all Trades”

How many times in your professional career has someone asked you what your strengths and weaknesses are? If you are like most people, you gloss over what you are really good at and explain what actions you are taking to mitigate your weaknesses. After all, the concept of being first, the compelling force to win at everything is ingrained in us from a very early age. Being first in the class to master your multiplication tables (thank you Mrs. Manwarren), first to learn cursive writing, first place on the ball field and first in line for the queue to go to lunch. For most people the embarrassment from not winning is a stronger motivator then actually receiving the trophy. This basic human tendency helps drive us to improve and can be a great inspiration. However, it is also one of the principle reasons why we tend to place our efforts on improving our deficiencies rather then magnifying our strengths.

Translating this concept to the business world; employees, managers, and leaders that only focus on improving their weaknesses does help increase the average organizational intelligence, but only slightly. The result unfortunately is the organization becomes pretty good at everything but not exemplary or tremendous at anything. In essence, your company is filled with a number of “Jack of all Trades” but as the saying goes, “Masters of None.”

It is difficult to be innovative, creative and continue to delight your customers if everybody has the same knowledge level and skill set. Although cross training is important, if everyone is completely interchangeable you lose the ability to leverage the diversity of the group and gain insight from different perspectives. Average companies can not differentiate themselves in the marketplace and therefore have a diminished capacity for developing value for the their customers.

By switching the paradigm and having your employees focus on their strengths, you elevate the top rung of the organizational intelligence ladder. This concept allows for faster and higher levels of knowledge attainment. The key to success for this business model is through the careful and intelligent selection of teams. Through the appropriate selection of complimentary team members you can create several super groups. Matching people together with different strengths helps offset individual weakness while maximizing the groups potential.

One of the easiest and most effective ways to exploit this concept is through the creation of cross-functional A3 & Kaizen teams. Allowing experts from different areas of the company to collaborate facilitates a higher level of thinking and more creative solutions. While increasing the knowledge of the entire organization should always be an ongoing corporate goal, allowing people to excel at their strengths drives loftier results. This differentiation drives value while making it more difficult for your competition to emulate.

Fight the urge to be a “Jack of All Trades”. Understand your strengths and focus the majority of your resources on becoming the best of the best. Then, collaborate with an expert on your weakness. After all, two heads are better then one and many heads are better then a few. Imagine what you could accomplish if all the heads on your A3 were luminaries in the specific areas.