"Plug your gaps." - Richard Brown
Motivation Monday - Richard's Insight
Plug your gaps has become something of a mantra for me. It has emerged out of hindsight or reverse engineering if you prefer. As I look back and reflect on the success and failures that I have had, I can identify that in a large part, either having gaps unfilled or conversely by filling the gaps that I did have, played a significant part.
So, what is a gap? A gap is a shortfall or deficit in some area. It could be time, money, skills, experience, contacts, knowledge and so on. It stands to reason that, unless we are super-human, we will have some sort of deficit, shortfall or blindspot in some area of our lives, especially in our business / professional lives.
The solution, therefore, is either to plug the gap ourselves or alternatively, to leverage the resources of someone else to plug the gap instead. One road is shorter than the other one I have found. I have always been a pretty resourceful chap...in fact one of my Belbin team roles was identified as 'Resource Investigator'. I also have a passion for learning and educating myself in various areas, teaching myself the fundamentals of various different industries over the three decades of my working life. However, at times I have to admit that I was too self-reliant if I am completely honest with you. This has held me back at times...
As a slight tangent, I really should have got this message earlier than I did. I remember going on an outward bound programme as a part of my trainee management development when I worked at HSBC. I remember how I organised our team for one task, where we divided the tasks into either achievable by small partnerships working together and then a couple of big risk-taking activities that whilst extremely difficult and challenging, could bring in some big bonus points as well but a little more solo in nature (e.g. running across mountainsides for large distances).
I was the stupid one that took on those big challenges and they paid off, resulting in our team winning that challenge with those big bonus points. That was a different lesson, however; risk-taking, which is a whole story lol.
However, the other activity that stuck with me from that same programme was when we were rope-climbing up a cliff. I remember being pretty fit and just a little bit determined to be one of the first to the top. However, I misplaced my step, slipped and fell. Fortunately, I was tied to my teammates who, of course, held me and prevented me from falling. The instructor looked at me and said 'sometimes you can't do it all on your own and that's why you need a team around you'. I didn't really listen to that in earnest for several years, however!
Fast-forward to now and on the other hand, I recognise the brilliant power of leverage and harnessing the resources of other people. Whether that is in a team, business, or by utilising outsourced service providers and suppliers or even partnerships of various kinds. I can honestly say that this leverage has catapulted my growth at times and yet I sometimes resort to type and try to do too much on my own.
So, I take another dose of my own medicine here as I write these words again for us both...plug your gaps...harnessing the skills, abilities and resources of other people really can and indeed does provide an opportunity for the equation 1 + 1 > 2 to be true.