The businesses of commerce, conquest and of life require three key command skills. Without all three of these complementary component abilities, problems will generally not be solved, and objectives will not be achieved. The ultimate test of any leader, manager, entrepreneur is the ability to establish an objective (usually born of a vision and fueled by a driving passion), and to ultimately reach it through a process of problem-solving and decision making utilizing all assets and intelligence at his or her disposal.
Regrettably, it is incredibly rare that these three skills co-exist in significant levels in any one individual; it is quite rare that any two of these three qualities have been cultivated in any single person; and it is increasingly difficult to find a "C -Suite" or Executive Officer caliber person who can even claim a mastery of even one.
Here they are:
1) The knowledge of what needs to be done;
2) The knowledge of how to actually do what needs to be done, subject to budgetary and temporal constraints, as well as other pressuring parameters or limiting conditions;
3) The knowledge of how to implement, to put into coordinated, cooperative action, what must be done given the resources available and the limitations imposed.
While some very brilliant and highly successful individuals are not experts in all three categories, most of these people have a viable, fluid working knowledge of all three of these skill set requirements, and know how to enlist or recruit the assistance in partnership or collaboration of their most needed counterparts. A strong leader knows his or her areas of weakness, and either strengthens them, or engages the services of another who comes pre-qualified.
Go ahead. Take Command. Assess yourself honestly, take an inventory of your strengths and weaknesses in accord with the simple list above, and work to exercise the weak 'management muscles' while recruiting talent to complement your strengths and to cover for your deficiencies.
As a personal note based upon my own failures in many project and program efforts through a long career, don't let pride ever get in the way of your assembling a team with all of the vital areas addressed.
Douglas E Castle [http://aboutDouglasCastle.blogspot.com]
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