Be more of who you are

A couple weeks ago, I found out that I was lucky enough to be selected to participate in a leadership development program. And by lucky, I mean it sincerely. It's a program that I think will give me the opportunity to develop my skills, and help me advance in the organization. But, that's not what this post is about.

As part of the program, we were sent a book to read prior to the first class called StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. There is a line in the book that really stuck with me, and caused me to take a moment and think. In it he says "You cannot be anything you want to be - but you can be a whole lot more of who you already are."

The premise behind the book, and epitomized in this statement, is that we spend an awful lot of time working on things that we are not good at, and not enough time perfecting the things that we are. This can lead us to actually be more miserable when it comes to doing our jobs and going to work. We enjoy the things that we are naturally good at, and therefore want to do more of them.

I think that this idea is very relevant, especially in marketing. Marketing covers a very broad spectrum of tasks, requiring a broad skill set. Everything from marcom to pricing to strategy and even to logistics. Each of these requires a different skill set. Though too often, as marketing teams, and marketers, we organize around the whole, and not the skills of the individuals. I like using widget examples, and apparently my sister likes reading about widgets, and since she makes up more than 15% of my follower base, here we go.

Assume that your company manufacturers 3 widgets, the Tiny Widget, the Middle Widget, and the Big Ol' Widget. You have a 3 person marketing team to market your widgets. There are two different ways to organize around this. The first is to assign each marketer a widget. This is the easiest, and from my small bit of experience, a pretty common way to do it. But here's the problem. Not all of your marketers are going to have talent and skills in each area of marketing. Say the Tiny Widget Marketer has great marcom skills. She knows how to develop amazing collateral pieces. However, she doesn't like pricing, and struggles with numbers. So she either develops great marcom, but the pricing is off, or she feels frustrated about doing the pricing, and her marcom slips.

The second way to organize around skill set. You have marketer 1 focus on marcom needs for all 3 widgets. Marketer 2 is then responsible for the pricing and promotional strategy. Marketer 3 is responsible for figuring out distribution, or segmentation and targeting. Which of these methods is going to lead to the best results?

I know this post is getting a little long, but the idea really got me thinking. If teams are structured around talent, they are bound to be more effective. You have fewer people coming in and dreading working on a particular portion of a project. As a marketer, it is important to recognize where your strengths/talents truly lie, and develop those to become more of who you are. Then you can help organize yourself around those and deliver truly excellent marketing for you and your organization.