Being Ruthless About What You Shouldn’t Do

I have been reading and studying the book End Malaria this week.  It’s a compilation of 62 authors who came together to help, as you might imagine, end malaria in Africa.  For every book that you purchase, $20 is donated to buying mosquito nets.

The first part of the book is about focus, a topic that ironically, I have a hard time focusing on.  The first two writers, Kevin Kelly and Roger Martin, write about a very similar discipline.  Kevin Kelly writes about only doing the work that you are uniquely gifted to do, and Roger Martin writes about “thin slicing”, the practice of working your way into only the work that you are best at.

Notice that I said working your way “into” the work that you are best at.  In most companies, shedding work that is given to you is seen as lazy or not being a “team player.”  It’s typically seen as working your way “out of” something, rather than “into” something.

The fact is that you, and I, are horrible at certain things and really good at others.  I am great at starting new things, but generally not great at the tedium of managing those things each day, as an example.  When we do the work we are horrible at, it induces more stress and causes us to waste time and effort.  It’s not something that is in our sweet spot.  When, however, we are in a groove on the thing that makes us tick, we get amazing amounts of work done of amazing quality.

Working yourself into your best work does not mean you get to ignore the other work.  Roger Martin talks of taking almost a year to train the people around him to do the work that is required by his organization, and to do it his way.  It was at that point that he felt good enough about the systems and practices he had put in place to step away from that work.  It was more work up front in return for far, far less work in return.

The temptation we all have is to think we should do everything.  The fact of the matter is, however, we should do only a very small slice and do it unlike anyone else.  That is where we provide the most value.

Question: What are you doing today that would be better done by someone else?  If you had to divest yourself of it immediately, how would you do it?