Talent Talk

Is my job helping me fulfil my potential? Do I have the opportunity to use my talents every day? Is my work engaging my strengths?

These are the questions that we ask ourselves from time to time and are central to our experience in the world of work. A recent article in the Harvard Business Review picks up on these questions, with some advice on how to reach our potential.

Writing in the latest issue, Robert Kaplan shares his view that it’s important not only to identify our strengths, but also to become aware of our weaknesses.

A previous article here on Talent Talk (Drucker: Focus on Strengths) stressed the importance of strengths and how few people are aware of their own strengths, let alone their weaknesses.

Robert Kaplan gives some useful tips on how to do this: through asking your team members in a structured way. You could almost call this approach ‘an informal 360° feedback session’.

A painting of a muddy pond with a few lilies floating on it sold for a record $80m last week amid signs that despite the economic downturn, the art market is in good health.

Monet’s Bassin aux Nympheas may not strike you as being one of his greatest works (as in all probability it is not) but the fact that it was able to attract such a high bid says something about how we price talent.

Intrigued, as ever, in the goings on in the world of the arts, this latest skyscraper design signals a break from the past on a grand level.

If this post sounds like news, you may be forgiven for thinking so. Because it is now over forty years since Peter Drucker wrote ‘The Effective Executive’ yet, in that time, we have seen very little movement away from the ‘weakness-based’ approach still practised in many schools (’you are strong at something, so that is fine; you are weak at something, therefore focus your energy on fixing that weakness’), and which stay with us as we move into adult life.

Drucker, of course, urged us to move away from that flawed paradigm.

‘Life copies art’. So the saying goes. But there are times when art uncannily copies life, and one such example is in the movie The Matrix. I must admit I disliked the movie at first. All the hard edges and sci-fi special effects. But the meaning behind the movie soon grew on me and I couldn’t help but be impressed by the parallel universe of the world inside the Matrix and the real(?) world without. The Matrix should certainly be required viewing before any company embarks on a change management programme. Take this for the typical situation faced by individuals when they reach a fork in the road: