{"id":2601,"date":"2014-02-18T13:10:29","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T21:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/masonmyers.com\/?p=2601"},"modified":"2015-01-28T12:58:38","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T20:58:38","slug":"invest-in-strengths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masonmyers.com\/invest-in-strengths\/","title":{"rendered":"Invest in Strength Rather Than Work on Weakness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Investing<\/p>\n

Invest in strength<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For your business, do you believe it is more important to spend more time on your challenges or your opportunities?\u00a0 Similarly, do you believe that you should invest in your strengths or work on your weaknesses?<\/p>\n

The answer, of course, depends.\u00a0 If the challenge in your business threatens your business all together, then it becomes obvious.\u00a0 In most normal situations, however, we all probably spend more time worrying about our challenges and weaknesses than we should.<\/p>\n

Invest In Your Strength<\/h2>\n

Fabrizio Freda, CEO of Estee Lauder, looks for his executives to strengthen their strengths, rather than trying to improve weaknesses. Freda says: “Don’t make people improve 10% or 20% in areas they’re not good at. \u00a0But that’s what companies do every day. It’s like a soccer coach telling the goal keeper to learn to play attack. . . \u00a0Companies waste their time pushing managers to work on their weaknesses.”<\/p>\n

Peter Drucker says that once you master common courtesy and overcome bad habits, “One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence.” Invest in your people’s strengths.<\/p>\n

Similarly, I once received some advice that CEO’s should have the discipline to always work more on opportunities than challenges.\u00a0 Challenges can be delegated, but often the CEO is the one who can most effectively pursue opportunities. \u00a0Daily challenges demand our attention constantly.\u00a0 However, being magnificent at solving these small challenges may not matter in a few years while magnificently pursuing opportunities could make a large difference to the entire organization.<\/p>\n

Fortune wrote an article about CEO Freda in their Nov 18, 2013 issue (behind their paywall).<\/p>\n

Other of my blog posts on company culture:<\/h3>\n