If you’re not good at something, is it a weakness? If you’re good at something, is it a strength? No, it’s not that simple. There’s a difference between natural talents or strengths, and things that you learn over time by building skills and knowledge. There are many things that when you start out, you will be unskilled. That’s not a weakness. I’ll pause right there, to let that sink in. It’s a key concept when you’re trying to figure out your strengths and weaknesses.

I got an email from a GM (General Manager) at Microsoft, who will be giving a presentation at Microsoft on “How To Be an Effective IC (Individual Contributor)” and he’s collecting best practices. Scott Hanselman shared his thoughts and I thought I would share mine. For this post, I attempted to boil down some of the best lessons I’ve learned for myself, that I mentor others, and that I see others put into practice.

Here’s a simple model I’ve been using lately to help some friends think about the infamous passion vs profit question. I actually like to think of it as a passion AND profit … and value question. It really is a simple model, but it helps highlight a couple of key points. For one thing, the saying do what you love, and the money will follow, is misleading.

The 20 percent spike is a distinctive strength. It’s unusually powerful. Using your 20 percent spike generates exponential results. It’s a way to amplify your impact and maximize results. My 20 percent spike is information artistry. I use this skill to create, organize, and share complex information in a simple way. At work, it helps me write more effective books. At home, it helps me learn faster and turn insights into action. From a service standpoint, it helps me unleash the best in others.

One of my favorite training sessions this past year was called “Why Should Anyone Be Lead By You?” One of our exercises was to figure out our unique differentiators by looking at our life experiences. In other words, what unique skills or experiences do we bring to the table, that are relevant for this particular situation? Everybody has a story–hopes, dreams, wins, losses, and lessons learned. We write our stories a page at a time. Ultimately, it’s not how the stories end, but what we carry forward that matters.

Are you in the right career based on your strengths? You can use your strengths as a guide to help you figure out which jobs to test and which jobs to avoid. For example, it’s tough to be in marketing if you’re not a people person. If you like knowledge work, you might find you enjoy software. You can use your strengths as another lens to help you chart your course. If you’ve ever felt like the elf that wanted to be a dentist, take heart that following your strengths improves your chances for success.

I’d like to share some of the insights that others have shared with me over the years about choosing career paths. My favorite insights have always been guiding questions that help me choose my own adventure. In this post, I share the same questions that some of my mentors have given me that have helped me analyze potential jobs, think through career decisions, and pick my paths. What’s interesting about the questions is that not only can you use them to analyze potential opportunities, you can use them to analyze a job you already have. Sometimes the best job, is the one you already have, but you may need to reinvent yourself or your job.

A friend of mine told me a story the other day. I liked his reminder of how your job satisfaction, is more about your perspective, than the job.

It’s Not Your Job …
The story goes like this. As he was walking to his jet, on a picture perfect day, he thought to himself, how boring … one more routine solo flight. Then it hit him. He’s doing a job that other people only dream of. He realized that day and ever since, it’s not your job that determines what you enjoy … it’s what’s between your ears.

You can’t be an expert in all things. However, you can improve your overall effectiveness by rounding out your skills. While it’s good to specialize, knowing the basics in some key areas will help you put your knowledge to work. I’ve found that while it’s important to specialize in some areas, that I get more results by adding other areas to my belt. For example, focusing on business helps me invest my time better. Learning marketing fundamentals helps me get more impact from the work I do.

You need to test your decisions against reality. A lot of decisions might sound good at the time or look good on paper. When the rubber meets the road, you might find there were a lot of assumptions or it simply was a bad idea. Some ideas also become obsolete by the time they’re implemented. To really test your decisions, you need feedback loops that provide first-hand experience. Nothing beats seeing it for yourself. A written report never conveys the same information. I think the key is that first-hand experience includes an emotional aspect that gets lost in translation. It’s that emotional aspect that can be your best gauge of whether something is really working. It’s not that you need to distrust people in their feedback, it’s that you need to distrust communication.

I’m realizing more and more how stories help you drive a point home. It’s one thing to make a point, it’s another for your story to make the point for you. If your ideas aren’t sticking, or you’re not getting buy in, maybe a compelling story is the answer.
Stories at Work
Crafting useful stories is an art, and, now, apparently a science. Srinath pointed me to Stories at Work on 50Lessons.com. The video shares a story about using stories as a catalyst for change and a recipe …

Photo by David Masters
Do you have a favorite set of forcing functions?   A forcing function is any task, activity or event that forces you to take action and produce a result.   If you have areas in your life that you’re finding inertia, try adding some forcing functions to get results.
Slides as Forcing Functions
At Microsoft patterns & practices, one of our forcing functions is building a slide deck.  Building a deck is a forcing function because it forces us to distill the points, close down on issues, identify what …

The Boostrappers Bible by Seth Godin is one of the best compilations of actionable, business insight I’ve seen.  It took me a while to go through it and each time I go through, I find another nugget of insight or a new lens.  I’ve been recommending it to friends, family, and colleagues.  The price is right – free – and it’s one of the best consolidations of insight and action I’ve seen in a while.
What I especially like about the Bootstrapper’s Bible is that it actually resonates.  For more …

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." — Will Durant
One of the ways you can transform your ordinary day into extraordinary is to master your craft.  By thinking of yourself as a craftsman, you can think of your work as your art. 
By immersing yourself in your work, you become fully engaged.   When you’re fully engaged, you find your flow.   As you improve your art, you grow your ability.  As you grow yourself you grow your job.  The opposite is to …

As a mentor at work, I like to checkpoint results. While I can do area-specific coaching, I tend to take a more holistic approach. For me, it’s more rewarding to find ways to unleash somebody’s full potential and improve their overall effectiveness. Aside from checking against specific goals, I use the following frame to gauge progress.

Winners never quit and quitters never win, right?  Wrong!  Winners quit all the time.  Winners quit the things that aren’t working or the things that won’t pay off in the long run.  They move on to where they can be their best.  Perhaps the best in the world.
Winners don’t quit when it gets tough.  In fact, that’s exactly the wrong time to quit.  That’s where the Dip comes in.  The Dip is that long curve between starting out and making it to the top.  It’s where you find the …

How do you prepare for the second half of your life?  In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter F. Drucker writes about 3 potential paths for the second half of your life.
3 Answers for the Second Half of Your Life
Drucker provides 3 answers for the second half of your life:
1.    Start a Second Career
2.    Develop a Parallel Career
3.    Become a “social entrepreneur”
Start a Second Career
According to Drucker, one path is to start a different career:
The first is actually to start  …

This post is an index of my book nuggets from Work from the Inside Out: Seven Steps to Loving What You Do, by Nancy O’Hara. In this book, the author shows you how to find meaning in your job by looking inside yourself. Rather than get stuck in the routine of our jobs, office politics, and problematic projects, O’Hara provides a simple plan to reclaim your job and your life – and ultimately find the ability to truly love what you do.
My Nuggets
Here’s my nuggets so far …

How To Figure …

This post is an index of my book nuggets from The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, by Michael Watkins. In this book, the author shows you how to get up to speed and be effective within the first 90 days of your job. He provides practical steps you can take to get on top of things, initiate changes, perform self-assessment, and have effective conversations with your new boss and direct reports.
My Book NuggetsHere are my book nuggets so far …
Business Situation Analysis

Diagnosing Your …

This is an index of my book nuggets from The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, by Michael E. Gerber. In this book, the author shows you how to grow your small business in a predictable and productive way. Gerber shows you how to apply the lessons of franchising to work on your business rather than in your business. You’ll also learn how to effectively manage your inner Entrepreneur, Manager and Technician, as well as understand and leverage the stages of your …