Playing To Your Strengths

After that incredibly annoying diatribe from the head of my organization (national lobbying organization, not the head of our company), we got an awesome speech from Marcus Buckingham. In case you don’t know who he is, he’s the co-author of two of the most influential business books of the past decade, First Break All the Rules and Now Discover Your Strengths. He’s got a new book out called Go Put Your Strengths to Work. I love listening to the major consultants – Jack Welch, Marcus Buckingham, Rudy Giuliani, Jim Collins, and even Stephen Covey. Why? For starters, they’re engaging. They do this for a living and it shows. They know how to use humor and everything in their bag of tricks for maximum play. Second, they have extraordinarily useful stuff. Buckingham talked about quite a few different ideas starting with working on your strengths instead of your weaknesses. Manage around your weaknesses and spend no more than 25% of your day doing things unrelated to your strengths. Essentially it’s almost an economic view on an individual level – if you’re the best at putting a widget in a car door and you love to do it, focus on that, don’t try to put a piston in a chamber. Put your widgets in and enjoy your life. There was so much more, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point you to his website and say take a look at all of that.