If you are a powerlifter, you can’t get stronger if you don’t work on your weaker muscle. So goes the saying that a chain is only as strong as the weakest link.

Conventional wisdom suggests that one should strive to become a well-rounded person. Have a few strengths, but work on your weaknesses, at least until you become slightly above average in that area.

Peter Drucker in his fantastic book Managing Oneself recommends exactly the opposite.

First and foremost, concentrate on your strengths. Put yourself where your strengths can produce results. Second, work on improving your strengths. And waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence - that is - your weaknesses.

Nowhere is this phenomenon more clearly visible than in sports. Even at the highest level, players have their own areas of strength. And great players always bank on their strengths. Think about it, if Team India needed to bat a session out in order to save the game, Sehwag and Dravid would go about it very differently. Sehwag would do it by going after the bowling and trying to make 100 runs in a session while Dravid would do it by defending 100 balls.

Over the years, I have realized how effective Drucker’s advice is. It takes far more energy and hard work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from good to excellence.

Perhaps, it’s better to focus on your strengths because great performance often comes from making your strengths productive.

Best,
Kaddy

The Ten Meter Tower

Unforced Errors