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Billionaire Entrepreneur Mark Cuban Talks About Strengths

Thank you to my strengths practitioner friend Johan Oosthuizen for sharing this video... 

In this short interview with billionaire entrepreneur and Dallas Mavarick's Owner Mark Cuban, he talks about his philosophy of success.  He shares how he started to understand his own strengths at age 12.  Cuban shares his experience selling garbage bags from door to door:

"It was when I was selling them, that I realized that I like to sell, and that I could sell and I realized that selling was about providing a service and creating value for people.  I knew literally back then that I could always succeed".  If you are familiar with the Strengthsfinder Assessment... Cuban is sharing his recognition of the Talent Theme called "Woo".

Cuban continues, "I think when I was 16 years old, I started a stamp company and started going to stamp shows and trade shows, just working a little bit harder than other people (Strengthsfinder Achiever Theme) and trading up from one stamp to the next.  I remember I started with a quarter and bought one stamp and left with $50.00"

Cuban shares, "I've always been passionate.  I would stay up till 3 or 4 in the morning, even though I had to get up and go to school, and read Linn's Stamp News and Scott's Stamp Journals and have them all memorized.  Even when I was in college, I'd be in the library reading business books and looking for business biographies (Strengthsfinder Input Theme) and just reading all I could about business.  When I had Micro Solutions, I started with no money, I'd pull all nighters in front of borrowed computers teaching myself software and how to program (Strengthsfinder Learner Theme).  

I've always just really enjoyed the competition of business (Strengthsfinder Competition Theme).  The ultimate sport is business, and you have to do it 24x7x365 days forever.  There's always somebody out there trying to kick your butt.  There's always somebody who looks at your business and says, 'I can do that better - I have a better idea', and you have to compete with that person."

Cuban also talks about the importance of passion.  He shares, "Love what you do...it's not who you know, it's not how much money you have access to.  It's really about finding something that you really love to do.  I had no idea that I loved computers and technology.  I took one class in computers, then I bought a little PC, a 99/4A from Texas Instruments for $99.00 and started teaching myself to program.  I found out 4 hours later that I had been working this entire time and I loved it.  That was the difference.  I failed a lot of times and I didn't know where I'd find my success, and then all of a sudden, I started playing with PC's and technology and it just clicked."

Cuban concludes, "I think the most important thing is knowing your strengths and weaknesses and knowing what you enjoy doing.  If you look at it as job, you've already lost. It's not going to be your passion.  Your going to count the hours.  If you look at it as something you love to do, and then you know what your strengths are, then you can leverage those strengths in your business and helping others.  Once you recognize your weaknesses, then you can work with people that complement you.  In every one of my businesses I've had a partner that's very anal... Martin Woodall, Todd Wagner are incredibly perfectionist people.  I'm a slob.  I'm a big picture, think about what's around the corner... How's technology going to change things?  How can I change this industry?  I need to make sure that there's somebody there to dot the i's and cross the t's and keep me in the baselines.  Recognizing my weaknesses is just as important as recognizing my strengths and my core competencies and having a passion to do it."

That last paragraph is a pretty good summary of the Strengths Philosophy as I teach it.

Process Usually Trumps Product

When thinking about building a life based on your strengths, process usually trumps the specific product.  In other words, the most important thing is selecting work that consistently, on a daily basis involves performing tasks and activities that you are both good at and enjoy doing.

In his almost always brilliant blog, Seth Godin explains this principle using "Staples" as an example.  Godin begins:

"The people who started Staples didn't do it...

because they love office supplies.

They did it because they love organizing and running profitable retail businesses. They love hiring and leasing and telling a story that converts prospects into customers. Postits are sort of irrelevant.

You shouldn't become a middle school math teacher because you love math. You should do it because you love teaching.

I hope Staples has a senior buyer who actually does love office supplies. I hope that textbooks get written by people who love, really love, the topic they're writing about. It's easy, though, to fool ourselves into believing that going up the ladder means we get to do more of the thing we started out doing.

It's often the case that the people we surround ourselves with (and the tasks we do) have far more to do with job satisfaction and performance than the subject of our work."

Don't run to fast by that second to last line...  "It's easy, though, to fool ourselves into believing that going up the ladder means we get to do more of the thing we started out doing."  This is a strengths based explanation of the Peter Principle which simply put says, "People get promoted until they reach a position of incompetence.".

Just because you were great at your last job doesn't mean you will be even average at the one you get promoted into.  Consider the world of professional sports.  It is extremely rare for a world class athlete to go and become a world class coach in the sport they excelled at. In fact, name almost any world class coach and I will show you a fairly average performer.  In many cases, a weak performer.

This is played out everyday in business when the great sales person gets promoted into management only to fall flat on his or her face.  And the reverse is true.  An average sales performer slips into a management role and ends up finding his or her area of excellence.

In his book, "Inside Apple", Adam Lashinsky explains how founder Steve Jobs recognized and applied this insight.

"From the moment Jobs returned, corporate culture changed.  Employees would focus on whatever it was they did best and nothing else. Under Steve Jobs only one executive owned a P&L, and that was the chief financial officer.  By creating a system where by only a financial executive would mind the budget, Jobs forced functional executives to focus on their strengths.  Steve let people’s talent define their jobs, not jobs define their talent.”

Lashinsky quotes Jonathan Ive who is the now famous Apple Design Team Leader, 

“I was terrible at running a design business, and I really wanted to just focus on the craft of design. I worked out what I was good at and what I was bad at. It became pretty clear what I wanted to do. I was really only interested in design. I was neither interested, or good at building a business.” 

Lashinsky continues,  “Apples approach to career development is yet another way it ruins contrary to the norms at other other companies.  The  prevalent attitude for workers in the corporate world is to consider their growth trajectory - what’s the path up?  Companies spend an inordinate amount of time growing their people for new responsibilities... But what if it turns out that all that thinking is wrong?  What if companies encouraged employees to be satisfied where they are because they’re good at what they did?  Instead of employees fretting because they were stuck in terminal jobs, what if they were excited in having found their perfect job?  There are many professionals that find it liberating to work at what they are good at, receive competitive killer compensation, and not have to worry about supervising others or jockeying for higher rungs on the org chart.”