Years ago I coached a business owner who was scared of their own team.
They’d find reasons not to go into their own office. They felt powerless over the business they owned, and they were convinced everyone who worked there knew more about running it than they did. On paper they had what plenty of people are working towards. In practice they were dreading it.
In 1880 P. T. Barnum wrote down his golden rules for making money. The very first one is about fit.
The safest plan, and the one most sure of success for the young man starting in life, is to select the vocation which is most congenial to his tastes.
P. T. Barnum, The Art of Money Getting (1880), Don’t Mistake Your Vocation
He follows it with a father handing out careers to his sons like jobs on a rota: “I will make Billy a clergyman; John a lawyer; Tom a doctor, and Dick a farmer.” Nobody asks Billy, John, Tom or Dick what they’re good at.
Good at it, and loving it
Two things help someone achieve big things. Choosing something they’re good at, and choosing something they love doing.
If I had to pick one, it’s the second. You might not be good at something yet. If you love it, you’ll do the reps it takes to get good. If you can’t stand it, you’ll struggle to put the reps in at all.
The nice car doesn’t fix it
I’ve met a whole bunch of people in my career doing things they can’t stand. Jobs they don’t like. Businesses they don’t enjoy owning, built to make money and nothing else.
That’s a pretty hard way to live. You can walk out of the office, get into a nice car, go home to a nice house and eat in a nice restaurant. You’ve still got at least eight hours a day of the stuff you don’t enjoy waiting for you in the morning.
Who before how
For the business owner I coached, the change started with an identity shift. They realised they didn’t need to be able to do everybody’s job. They’d already worked out who they needed to hire. Maybe a few of those people needed to change, but the answer was much more about who than how.
The who showed up in three questions about them first:
- Who did they need to be?
- What was their role?
- What were they good at, and what did they love doing?
Once they knew who they needed to be and how they needed to show up, the rest followed. Who else did they need on the team? And how did they need each of those people to operate and behave?
Try those first three on yourself, about the work you do now. If the third answer barely shows up in your diary, that’s worth noticing. It usually means you’re spending your best hours on someone else’s job.
I talked about this on the podcast with Nigel Risner, in Who Do You Need to Become?, if you want to go further with the who.
What’s one thing on your plate right now that doesn’t fit you, and who could you hand it to?
