Five Steps to Fulfillment
No one can do it all. To be successful and fulfilled, you need understand where you play best, what your edges are, and how to find allies and peers who complement you.
My daughter Rosie is 19 months old. She stumble-toddles in an adorable way and parrots almost everything we say. Her face lights up when we praise her; she beams when the family claps to celebrate a recent achievements like sitting on the potty with a full diaper (it’s a start) , saying a new word, or doing a silly dance.
We are bigger and less cute than Rosie, but we get the same warm and fuzzy feeling when praised. Feeling warm and fuzzy is nice, so we seek out activities that are likely to generate praise. Over time, these activities can evolve into zones of genius.
Zones of genius are as varied and ever-changing as as we are. I believe that they contain five parts: skills, context, edges, edge-expanding alliances, and a challenge network to keep the zone growing.
The most basic part of a zone of genius is a skill like dancing, singing, coding, or playing a sport. These skill-based zones are easy to notice and tend to be what we’re praised for. Writing is one of my zones, so I seek out professional and personal [hi!] opportunities to write. Yet skills are only part of the equation.
The second part is context. This matters more than we’d like to believe. To give an extreme example: an analytical and argumentative person could make a great litigator, but they’d likely have challenges as a preschool teacher. It’s a mistake to assume that someone who struggles in one situation will struggle in others; context matters, and finding the right one is hard. Here are some of the professional contexts I’ve tested:
Company size - I’ve worked in two start-ups and for some of the largest companies in the country, but nothing in the middle. At this point, I don’t think that matters much to me; being in sync with the Executives is more important.
Company type - Consultancies, NGOs, software companies, start-ups, academics, and industry leading companies play different roles. What I’m trying to figure out is which of these my strengths are best suited for.
Job Function - this has departmental (sales, marketing, product, vendor management), management responsibility (individual contributor, manager, etc.) axes. Sustainability tends to an ancillary cost center in large companies, but can be the driving force in a sustainability-focused consulting or software company.
Consistency - how steady state are the role and company? Some people want to get into a groove, develop deep expertise, and spend a lifetime in a space. That’s amazing, but it isn’t me. I love making connections, seeing how the whole fits together, and imagining what comes next.
The third step is identifying your zone’s edges. An edge is where your skills start to taper off. Focusing on where we excel doesn’t require acknowledging or even understanding our edges. Everyone has edges; if you can’t quickly identify a few of your own, an inability to be honest with yourself is an edge to work on.
Admitting that we aren’t good at something is hard — especially at work. Many years ago, I received a verbal job offer only to be rejected because I wasn’t good enough at Excel. This experience plagued me; for years I avoided Excel.
Avoidance was the wrong strategy. I ran away from my edge. Over time, I learned that it’s better expand your edges by forming alliances with people who complement you. Over the years, I’ve had several productive collaborations with strong modelers because my ability to see connections and frame problems can expand an edge many of them have. Today, I actively seek out scientists and designers whose skills I admire and augment, but cannot replicate, to partner with.
No one is perfect, and it’s critical to enhance your skills by working with people who share your strengths and can push you (there’s a reason professional athletes work out together and not with me). To explain why this is so, I turn to Adam Grant’s concept of a challenge network [podcast link] or as he puts it
a group of people we trust to point out our blind spots and help us overcome our weaknesses. Their role is to push us to be humble about our expertise, doubt our knowledge, and be curious about what knowledge we don’t have.
I recently went to part of my challenge network to review a white paper I’m writing, and oh my goodness was it amazing. They challenged my core assumptions, which provided me with a better approach for how to finalize our model and share our findings. For me, it’s hard to beat the joy of having an idea challenged and improved by people who do what I do, only better.
In the end, we all want to feel like Rosie on the playground (see below). As an adult, this can be hard. I think that following the five steps related to a zone of genius can go a long way towards helping us find fulfillment and joy. To recap, they are:
identify what you like and do well,
look for a context that suits you,
discover your limitations,
find people who fill your gaps, and
have mentors who can challenge you.
On any given day, I have somewhere between 3 and 4 of these figured out, which is pretty good. But it could be better, which is why I’m always experimenting.
