Why Ignoring Your Strengths Can Reduce Vulnerability
Written By Ali Uren Founder and Director of Kiikstart
From a young age, we are always taught to find what we’re good at and leverage off of our skillset. What we aren’t taught or shown, is how to identify our own skill gaps and work on threats and risks we may pose to a business.
As an individual, a workplace leader or a business as a whole, this identification process is important and should be a common part of any workplace practice.
It becomes easy for a business to settle into its own strengths and find comfort in the absence of challenge, however, this tactic lacks inspiration and ignores the inevitability of innovation. It also leads to complacency and certain lacklustre.
True opportunity comes from making the time to self-reflect and critically analyse where vulnerabilities lie within a business and its staff, and then being curious enough to ask what if? This also means being courageous and self-aware enough to reflect on our own performance.
What if we challenged the commonly held belief that skill gaps, threats, and risks are negative? What if we changed that mindset and flipped it into something that is positive, encouraging growth and innovation?
The business that will best respond to disruption, in all its forms, are the ones who will create a workplace reality that is brave enough to do the following:
- Create consistent opportunities for open and respectful discussions around skill gaps, threats and risks.
- Allow staff to own up to their errors and see this as a way to innovate and not a reason to be fearful.
- Be solution-focused.
- Provide opportunities for all staff to reflect and think about such areas.
- Be consistently asking, what if?
Curiosity is key.
Ask yourself as a business or leader, how can I/we make a better, different outcome from a negative situation or skill gap?
Real opportunity comes from being confident enough, safe enough and supported by those in leadership to ask:
- What is the root cause of this skill gap, threat, and risk? Why does it exist?
- What is the consequence of not taking action?
- What benefits would there be to taking action?
- How would we need to take the first steps and by when?
- How do we measure the success of action?
- What does success look like?
Disruption is a silent threat that hides behind the digital change. In fact, change in all its shapes and forms. Often when disruption hits, it hits without warning and leaves businesses vulnerable to extinction. By embracing the mindset of embracing skill gaps, threats and risks, you are increasingly ready to respond to said disruption.
Why is it too late to respond when the disruption is on your doorstep?
- Reactive responses lack the force of proactive planning.
- The staff may not have the talent and skill required to formulate a plan.
- It is too expensive and resource-rich to fight the change.
- There is no plan in place which means you have no direction to execute a response.
- There is a lack of staff morale.
- Staff are panicked, making it hard to make smart, strategic decisions.
Remember the greatest opportunities to innovate come from adopting a different mindset and perspective to what you fear the most. Be brave and curious enough to ask – what if?