Play to Your Strengths. Shore Up Your Weaknesses

For some reason, it’s popular to tell people that they should focus on their strengths and ignore their weaknesses. This is terrific advice . . . in context, anyway. My strengths are in sales and marketing. I care deeply about financials, but I am not a CFO, an accountant, or a bookkeeper. Focusing on my strengths means that I should focus on a few lines of the P&L, and not on the work of putting the P&L together. This is an example of what people mean when they offer this advice that you should focus on your strengths. If you don’t focus on minimizing your real weaknesses, they will be your undoing.