“Happiness isn’t something you experience; it’s something you remember.” – Oscar Levant
Viewing entries tagged
experience
“Ask yourself this, ‘In light of my past experiences, my current circumstances, and my future hopes and dreams, what is the wise thing for me to do?’” - Andy Stanley
“Expertise is the enemy of innovation” – Stephen Shapiro
To read more about innovation, check out, What Fire Teaches Us About Innovation.
“Information is pre-digested experience. Experience is messy, wasteful, and takes time.” - Chris Dede, Harvard
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!” - Hunter S. Thompson
This weekend, some of our friends were having car trouble. They had ruled out a dead battery or a low gas tank and they resigned themselves to call roadside assistance. The tow truck arrived and before it was hitched up, the technician did some trouble-shooting. He then shimmied under the car and tapped the starter with a hammer. It started right up. If they had gotten a bill for this service incidence, the invoice might have read:
$1 – hammer tapping
$499 – knowing where to tap the hammer
Never undervalue experience.
Each of us have had similar experiences when bringing in an expert has made all the difference. Costs avoided. Disasters averted. Downtime reduced. Customers delighted.
And yet, we all romanticize the do-it-yourselfer. Those Pinterest-fueled upstarts who can tackle professional-grade projects and make it look easy. There are television networks to celebrate their accomplishments. These shows give us confidence. Maybe even over-confidence. After all, we are seeing huge transformations in a 30 minute show. A few time lapse videos between the opening credits and the big reveal. That is certainly true in the personal world.
But it is also true in the professional world. Sometimes executives find it tempting to think they can do marketing, business development or even legal work, without trained experts. It is an all-too-common scenario to over estimate our own abilities and our time and to experience “Pinterest fail” type experiences in the work world.
So, when do you call in an expert?
1. When the risk of being wrong is extreme.
This obviously applies to litigation or regulatory compliance issues or any area where specialty knowledge is required, but it also applies to areas where the strategic risk is high. If you can experiment with little impact, then, by all means, feel free to do so. When you need a decision that is warranted or that requires technical expertise, call in the guru.
2. When time is of the essence.
Do you have a limited market window to get a product to market before big competitors sabotage your chances? Then you might want a professional sales and marketing team with industry experience who can hit the ground running. If you want to avoid delays in getting your product certified, setting up an efficient assembly line, or launching a new website, find someone who has done the work before and has a proven track record.
3. When you are better suited for other priorities.
My grandpa, who has a contractor, told a story about how a doctor client of his took vacation time to paint his own house instead of hiring someone. If he had worked that week, he could have paid a painter and had money left over, plus ended up spending more time than a professional. “It’s hard to beat a man at his own craft,” he would say. Each one of us has things that we are great at and the more time we can spend doing those things, instead of doing a mediocre job, that others could do. Know what you are good at focus your time there.
This article was featured on LinkedIn Pulse.
“Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Much has been written in professional and personal development circles about the importance of doing things that scare you. Tackling projects that take you out of your comfort zones. Roles that challenge you to grow. This has been the justification for exhilarating thrills like climbing Mt. Everest or life-changing moves like leaving an abusive relationship or embarking on a new career.
I have never thought of myself as a risk-taker. I generally had a “big fish, small pond” mindset. I liked to tackle projects that I believed I could do successfully. I have prided myself that my hobbies, my relationships, and my work are not drama-filled. I don’t even like horror movies. Alas, I am missing all the tell-tale signs of a risk taker, so I figured I wasn’t one.
Until now.
I now see that I am just a different type of risk taker and here are three things I am learning about managing risk.
1. Sometimes it’s the stop-watch, not the altimeter which measures the risk
It might not be the altitude of the mountain that is the risk, but the speed at which you are trying to ascend or the number of hills you are climbing at once. When I get overwhelmed or scared, it is generally not because of the enormity of any individual task or commitments I have made. It is rather because I am trying to do them all at once. I scare myself in this way regularly and I know I am not alone. Recognizing that deadlines and commitments, served up simultaneously, adds stress and complexity to otherwise reasonable tasks, is important to acknowledge. Those of us who rush to do more can give ourselves permission to recognize the risk for what it is and pull back or lunge forward as necessary.
2. “But isn’t multi-tasking bad?” is a trick, and surprisingly personal, question
Behavioral scientists say multi-tasking is a fallacy and that this lack of focus costs organizations millions of dollars a year in lost productivity. I respectfully, I don’t believe it. Maybe for some it is a bad thing. Making people work outside their natural work style can certainly backfire, but for me, it’s the only way. Experience has taught me that when I multi-task I accomplish more. I achieve better results. I think more clearly. I make connections between things that lead to new insights. I remain more open to ideas from others. I have certainly had professional failures and disappointments, but throughout I have found that action itself is a source of energy. The busyness isn’t the secret sauce, but it is certainly in the winning recipe for me.
3. Managing risk is about knowing your risk tolerance
You don’t gamble, what you can’t afford to lose. Whether you are analyzing the risk of an investment portfolio or contemplating bold moves in your career, managing risk appropriately requires an appreciation of risk tolerance. My risk tolerance has to do with judging my commitments against my priorities. Despite my multi-tasking ways, or perhaps because of it, I am a big believer in looking at my life in chapters. There is a time and place for everything. The good things need to find more time and space in my schedule and attention, crowding out things of lesser importance or urgency. Avoiding the fallacy that tasks or priorities are permanent or immovable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson summarized it well when he said, “Be true to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’” So, you might just scare yourself busy.
This article was published on LinkedIn.
With experience and expertise comes the ability to choose well. To understand better the implications of choices that you make. To see the full landscape when the forks in the road rise to meet us. To pick that which suits our strengths, brings us joy, and optimizes our success. To not worry about what others think of the choices we make, realizing that they are one of the few things in life that are truly our own.
A Subject Matter Expert (SME) is a person who has experience and capability in a certain field of study or discipline. On major project teams, they are the ones who you can in to make sure that what you are proposing is technically feasible or won't break a current process or system. Although in today's fast-paced, mobile, technology-drenched environment, people are rewarded for broad curiosities and interests, there is no substitute for deep expertise in an area. So, as we begin this new week, I am challenged to think about the areas in which I am an SME and how I can go deeper to learn more to strengthen my value there and how I might make that expertise available to solve problems and create possibilities.