Where does it all begin? How did you get to the point where you can do what you do today? Were you born with that capability, or did you “become” the talented and skillful person that you are?
Most believe that we have innate talent or strengths as part of who we are. Those talents then have to be surrounded by skills to bring out the best in each of us to perform at peak or to continuously improve. If we stop building on our strengths, our performance will most assuredly flatten out or diminish.
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 believe 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 will likely agree that even the most gifted of athletes need skills to succeed.
John Wayne was an academy award-winning actor with a persona almost bigger than life. Many people believe that the dialect and delivery of John Wayne were all-natural. In reality, John Wayne, though gifted with an amazing presence, voice, and handsome looks, was also a perfectionist. Some say he was so much so that he was sometimes difficult to work with on the movie set. That persona that appeared on the big screen in True Grit and others was also 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 through the air 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 happened to derail her dream. She broke her back in a snowboarding accident and softball was dropped 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. Now, I know this may sound almost Super Woman equivalent, but I can assure you that the story is true. She became the first woman to win gold medals in both the winter and summer Olympic Games.
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 due to the rapid acceleration of everything around us, including the people motivated to improve.
In the healthcare industry, as in all businesses, simply 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 accelerated so that those who hesitate to modify behavior, processes, and skill development to complement strengths will fall behind. Those who fail to 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 that you don’t draw the wrong conclusion. Businesses can be very action-oriented and reactionary 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. If the business wants to grow or the operators want to have more time for family and doing things outside of work, they must be strategic and growth-oriented.
I believe 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. That vision, of course, must be accompanied by leadership who believe in and are committed to the 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 exactly 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 do best 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 championships, and the Olympic gold medals.