What is your super power?
What are you best at?
What do you love to do more than anything else?
What work, when you get to do it, doesn’t feel like work?
I find myself asking CEOs questions like this a lot.
CEOs come in all shapes and sizes. The goal is not to round out their weaknesses so that they are all the same. Instead, the goal is to find out what they are uniquely qualified at and enable them to leverage that strength to grow themselves and their companies faster.
My belief is that when you spend most of your time doing what you do best, flexing your super power, you are happier. You get into a state of flow.
The more time you spend here, the better it is for you and your company.
Earlier in my career, when I was an operator, I became enamoured with fundraising. I was fascinated by it (still am) and set out to master it.
After many years of raising capital for companies I became a VC. This gave me a whole new perspective on fundraising.
Eventually I turned this super power into a business, starting a highly successful investment bank.
While deals are always intense, working on them wasn’t “work”. It was endlessly fascinating. I couldn’t get enough.
I structured my teams to enable me to maximize my super power. For example, when I was CFO at FreshBooks, I had a super strong controller running all the day to day finance functions, freeing me to focus on strategy and deals.
This approach of identifying and doubling down on your super power can, and ideally would be applied broadly in your company.
What if everyone had a role that leveraged their unique super power?
What if your hiring process focused on uncovering those super powers and then assessing fit with the needs of your company?
What would the impact be for yourself, your team and the trajectory of your business if you explicitly focused on identifying and maximizing these collective super powers?
Think through this for yourself and your business. If your super powers are leveraged the impact will be high.
Photo by Austris Augusts on Unsplash
