Continuing the discussion on Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Strengths I want to think about the implications around which of our talents we invest time and other resources in developing.
To review, efficiency is about the how. It is about the best methods, techniques, sequences, tools, and resources.
Effectiveness is about the what. What most needs to be done? It's about purpose, mission, goals, and priorities.
And Strengths introduce the discussion about who. Who should be doing this, given the natural talent and developed strengths that would optimize or best facilitate a goals accomplishment.
Another question that interplays with these three ideas is development. Given the natural talent available, where should we invest development time? Should we turn our own lives and our organizations into places of remedial education? Should we focus on helping the worst become average? Or should we help those with a lot of natural ability become great?
If you run the local Opera Company, should you give me singing lessons? Or would your time be better invested looking for the next Paverotti or Josh Groban?
I like the way leadership author John Maxwell who wrote Talent Is Never Enough puts it:
“You’ve probably heard somebody say, “You can do anything as long as you put your mind to it.” Sadly, as nice as that sounds, it simply isn’t true. In watching people grow, I have discovered that, on a scale of 1-10, people can only improve about two notches. For instance, I love to sing; that’s the good news. The bad news is that I can’t carry a tune. Now, let’s be generous and say that, as a singer, I’m a “two”. If I put lots of money, effort, and energy into developing my voice, perhaps I can grow into a “four”. News flash: on a ten-point scale, four is still below average. With regards to my career, it would be foolish for me to focus my personal growth on my voice. At best, I’d become an average singer, and no one pays for average.”
Maxwell continues, “Don’t work on your weaknesses. Devote yourself to fine-tuning your strengths. I work exceptionally hard on personal growth in four areas of my life. Why only four: Because I’m only good at four things. I lead, communicate, create, and network. That’s it. Outside those areas, I’m not very valuable. However, within those areas of strength I have incredible potential to make a difference.”
In his book The Eighth Habit, Stephen Covey expands on the concept of voice to include what we might call strengths. He writes:
"Voice lies at the nexus of talent(your natural gifts and strengths), passion(those things that naturally engergize, excite, motivate and inspire you), need (including what the world needs enough to pay you for), and conscience(that still, small voice within that assures you of what is right and that prompts you to actually do it)... There is a deep, innate, almost inexpressible yearning within each one of us to find our voice in life."
It's this voice Covey describes that we should all be developing. If our actual singing voice falls into what Covey describes here, then we should invest our last penny making it great. But if our singing voice is like John Maxwell's, let's dig deeper and find that place we can make our best contribution.
If we do this well, it will maximize both our efficiency and our effectiveness.
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