It is gridiron football season in America. I took a few minutes last Sunday to watch a bit of the game so many crave and spend tons of time viewing from September to February each season. I focused mostly on the wide receivers because I attended a birthday party for the granddaughter of a former wide receiver who played with a Hall of Fame quarterback, Doug Williams.
Many football wide receivers gifted with great speed and hands to catch fast flying pigskins on cold autumn days have success in the sport. But do you think that those two gifts alone are all that they need to succeed? What about the skill to learn the playbook, run a specific route, block appropriately, comprehend what defenders are attempting to do to disrupt their rhythm or the ability to understand what is most efficient when a play breaks down and they need to improvise? You probably agree that even the most gifted of athletes need skills to succeed.
Where does it all begin? How did you get to where you can do what you do today? Were you born with that capability or did you become the talented and skillful person who you are today?
Most assume that we have an innate talent or strengths as part of who we are. Those talents then must be developed by skills to bring out the best in each of us to perform at peak or continuously improve. If we stop building on our strengths, our performance will flatten out or diminish.
John Wayne was an academy award-winning actor with a persona almost bigger than life. Many people think the dialect and delivery of John Wayne was all natural. John Wayne, though gifted with an amazing presence, voice and handsome looks, was also a perfectionist. Some say so much so, that he sometimes became difficult to work with on the set. That persona that appeared on the big screen in True Grit and others was actually a persona created by Wayne and not inherited. He worked very hard at his craft and developed the skills to build on his strengths.
Michael Jordan was an amazing athlete and basketball player. He could fly for long distances, make quick cuts to leave defenders behind and deftly steal the ball from even the most cautious of opposing ball handlers. Michael was truly gifted. But Michael was also driven to win. He improved from a non-starter as a junior in high school to become perhaps the greatest hoopster of all time. Michael developed his shooting, dribbling, defending, passing and rebounding skills to complement his natural physical strengths to become that great.
One of my favorite athletes, Paralympic gold medalist Alana Nichols grew up in Farmington, New Mexico, a gifted and driven athlete. She was a star softball player who expected a division one college scholarship offer with her sights firmly set on making the able-bodied U.S. Olympic team. Two things derailed her dream. She broke her back in a snowboarding accident and they dropped softball as an Olympic sport. Dreams dashed? Not at all! Alana’s athletic ability only required an incredible zest for success in life combined with the willingness to transform her softball skills into downhill sit skiing and wheelchair basketball (don’t you see the similarity?). Now, I know this may sound almost Super Woman equivalent, but the story is true. She became the first woman to win gold medals in both winter and summer Olympic Games. Alana can do what she does because she has talents that she compliments with skill to become great at what she does.
Talent comes to us naturally. Skills we develop with study, work, intent and practice. Developing skills also requires vision, focus, and rigor. Most lazy people do not develop skills because they don’t want to work. They may be talented and rely on that natural, given ability to get by. Laziness breeds apathy and apathy has no engine or wheels to get it moving, at least not forward. In fact, I believe that standing still is the equivalent to moving backward because of the rapid acceleration of everything around us, including the people motivated to improve.
In the healthcare industry, as in all businesses continuing to do what we have always done with the motto of “we always figure it out” is probably not a winning formula anymore. The speed of change, the complexity and the competition has sped up so that those who hesitate to change behavior, processes and skill development to compliment strengths will fall behind. Those who do not plan should plan to fail. Those who do not discover their strengths and strive to build on them may become misfits, wanderers or not able to compete.
And sometimes the investment in discovering strengths and building on them is trumped by the perceived need to cut costs and focus on the transaction. Let me explain that so you don’t draw the wrong conclusion. Businesses can be very to the situation at hand. They do that for a variety of reasons including customer satisfaction, ownership demands, and the lack of process sophistication or planning, and being risk averse. One could say that they are very tactical in their approach. I believe that to be an unsustainable model, particularly if the business wants to grow or the operators want to have more time for family and doing things outside of work.
It all begins with a vision that inspires a company to step out of their comfort zone and make changes, discovering strengths or core competencies, and then putting a plan in place to build on those strengths to deliver on that vision. Leadership must believe in and commit to investment in their teams to help them become who they can (because of their strengths) and who they want to (because of their vision). For you and me it is the same. Discovering our strengths and then building on them by the complement of skills through training, reading, practice, repetitive utilization and the vision of always getting better at what we well is the correct path to endeavor. Without it, wandering around and reacting to others and situations becomes our norm. That is NOT how John Wayne, Michael Jordan and Alana Nichols won the Academy Award, the NBA championship and the Olympic gold medal, or how Doug Williams became a Hall of Fame quarterback.