Nothing is more frustrating than spending all of your time working outside your zone of genius. Maybe you’re someone who just wants to dig in and get your hands dirty. Or, are you the one who loves to plan how the full landscape is going to come together? Either way putting your efforts into the opposite end of the garden project will no doubt create frustration. Lets be honest, it also creates a less than beautiful result. At work, you might be spending 9 hours a day stuffing bulbs in the ground. Potentially hating every minute of it. Then you look up and see that everyone else is drinking lemonade and watching their tulips sprout through the dirt. If you’re feeling like no one appreciates your work, this is likely why.
This happens because you are trying to force yourself into a role that no longer suits you. Today I’m going to show you the four types of values people add in the organization. So you can identify which level of value holds your zone of genius and see examples of exactly how to step into it for yourself. If you’re still unsure after we walk through all 4, I have 3 quick questions that will bring you clarity. I‘m including lots more examples over on YouTube. Click here to join that conversation!
There are 4 types of value
Let’s be honest, there are about a million ways to add value to any team in any organization. The list is as long as the job functions your company asks any employee to do. Each of those items on the list falls into a type of value. Some people add value by actually pushing the broom, connecting the parts, or taking the customer calls. Others add value by ensuring that the work gets done timely and with quality. Then there are those who create the vision for the organization in the first place and those who translate that vision into something actionable. All work falls into these types of values and as a leader (regardless of your job title or status) you’re touching all of them, at least a little bit.
As we dig into each of these four types, I want you to think of them as quarters of a cast iron pan you’re oiling. (Stay with me here.) This oil is your bandwidth. It includes your time, focus, and energy for work. You pour a small amount of oil in the center of the pan and hold the bottom, shifting and leveling to spread your oil. The oil will inevitably glide into each quarter of the pan, at least a little, but you have to intentionally tilt the pan to have it flow into quarters you most want it. If you’ve ever oiled a pan like this, you know that simply moving the pan around won’t spread your oil through the entire pan. You just don’t have that much bandwidth. To get your oil in the places you most want it, you must be intentional about keeping it from the quadrants you don’t intend to fill in.
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Are you adding value through implementation?
Adding Value through implementation means you have your hand on the phone, the machine, or the broom. You are setting appointments for the clinic. You’re actually cleaning the teeth. You are making the sale to the new client. This is important and often very hard work, it’s exhausting. Think of individual contributors to the organization. They implement the plans cascaded by the leaders, to get the work done.
As a leader in the organization (supervisor level to C-suite) your implementation quadrant of your pan should be pretty limited in how filled it is. For higher level leaders there may be just a drop on that side of the pan. For supervisors, it might be a little bigger but tilting the pan toward implementation can be killer of value. Think of it this way. The President of a bank could help by opening another teller window. If she did that every day however she wouldn’t create a community engagement strategy. She wouldn’t oversee and anticipate regulatory changes. At the end of the day, you’d wait in line to make a deposit if you knew that money was safely getting you returns you could be confident in. The President is adding value in the biggest way by learning out of implementation and into a different quadrant.
Are you adding value through organization?
The first type of adding value that requires leadership, or management, is organization. You can do work and take direction as a follower but to organize and supervise the work getting done, you need to be able to lead people and manage tasks. In this type of value add you provide a plan, structure, and guidance for getting everything done. When done right, this is a full time job. I say that because far too frequently people try to stretch from this quadrant as if it offers nothing. However, skilled organizers inspire implementers to focus on priorities. They hit higher standards and goals as a team than they ever could alone.
Organization is where we first see leadership. It is also where many leaders stagnate. Imagine you’re holding your pan and you’ve slid oil into implementation. Maybe you led in one group of your peers so you tipped your pan hard toward organization. You worked hard and got the promotion but now you’re stuck. Stuck with all of your oil either in implementing or organizing with nothing left to spread. This is how you become a micro-manager. People who know how to get things done and how to set goals. They try to do both leaving them stuck right here. There isn’t enough oil to go around. If you want to move into middle management and potentially senior leadership roles, you’re going to have to really move that oil.
Are you adding value through communication?
You may have organized them to complete a task efficiently through organization. When you’re adding value through communication you unite them in a cause. Communicating allows people to see the vision of where they are going and see how they are part of that success. Let’s look at an example.
In college I had a natural resources class that required us to rake yards on Make a Difference Day. My friends and I showed up groggy and grabbed rakes, bags, and a list of addresses. Heads down we got ready to walk to the home wishing we were having coffee instead. Then, a man came out and shared why Make a Difference Day exists. He shared stories of some of the elderly veterans, retired business owners, and care givers that now needed caring for. He said that without us these people would get hurt doing it themselves or spend money they didn’t have. I was there. I could implement. The professor had organized a class of 70 of us to do the work. It was the communicator who gave us the energy we needed to clean every yard and be proud of our blisters in the end.
This is the sweet spot for managers to assistant vice presidents. Find your niche in the overall strategy from senior leadership and use your voice to share that vision in a way that the organizers can help the implementers use it. You won’t have enough oil, or bandwidth, to add value in communication if you’ve used it all in implementation and organization. However, you do need the flexibility to glide back into them from time to time. Imagine, the inspiration mixed with admiration for a communicator who then rolls up their sleeves and rakes shoulder to shoulder as they get even more specific and personal about the cause.
Are you adding value through ideation?
Ideation is creating value through crafting ideas and vision. If you were looking at value adds as a set of stairs (as opposed to our frying pan) ideation would be the top step. This is the mission that sparks inspiration. For example, Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. That mission adds value by being the driving force behind decisions and actions of the organization. But it isn’t just CEOs and Boards that add value through ideation. Imagine the lower level exec, or even middle manager, who says, we can empower people by getting technology into underdeveloped countries. Suddenly, they’ve contributed their own ideas that advance the mission. Now, they need to work strategically with people whose oil is spread into the other quadrants to communicate, organize, and implement this idea into reality.
Keep in mind, you have to earn your way here. If you cannot effectively share someone else’s vision, create a plan to get it done, and implement, you don’t get the opportunity to create a vision of your own. As I noted above, it can be done at differing scales but in any case, adding value through ideation requires credibility.
Not sure where you fit? Let’s solve that right now.
If you see yourself a little bit of everywhere, or you’re in one level and you’d like to get to another, answer these questions. What type of problems do you most enjoy solving? What problems can you solve easily? Then, what problems do you wish you could solve instead? For example, let’s say you love when you get to identify the holes in the call tree script and you wish you had more bandwidth to do it. You spend most of your time making the updates to the script because you can whip them out faster than anyone on the team. But you wish you could be the one to see that the script wasn’t bringing in the leads to hit the goals and having other people tackle those problems. Honestly though, that just feels impossible.
My guess is, you are living in implementation. The value you could be adding today, is in organization. Eventually though, you’d love to get to communication and the freedom and creativity that comes with it. If only you knew how. You’re frustrated because you’re not living in your zone of genius and you’re self-sabotaging by focusing on implementation. In other words, you tilted your pan and spread the oil in the wrong quadrant. There is good news though. There is a way to tilt your pan, starting today, get that value back where you want it. Start putting your time and energy into the best ways you can add value in your zone of genius. Then share the difference you’ve made. Don’t over complicate it, just tilt your pan.