Keys to Successful Business and Life
Success Key #4: Work Around Your Weaknesses

None of us are perfect. None of us can "do it all." The successful try to work on their critical weaknesses and work around those they can't eliminate. 

Guitarist and pianist Eddie Van Halen admits that he was never good at reading music. So how did he win piano competitions as a kid? He read well enough to pick out the right notes, then memorized them. With good memorization skills and "good ears," he bypassed the need to read music well. (1)

Paul Orfalea, super-successful founder of Kinkos (a copy store with over 1200 locations around the globe and over $2 billion in revenues annually), suffered from Dyslexia and ADHD to such an extent that he never learned to read. Neither could he run the copiers at his stores. So how did he complete college and start a successful business? He used his deficits to his advantage. In the fourth grade, he met Danny, whose entire family helped him with his academics. According to Orfalea, 

"Every major success I've had in my life has come about because I knew that somebody, often anybody, whether it was my wife, friend, or business partner, could do something better than I could."(2)

He learned to depend on others to offset his weaknesses and specialize in what he could do best - getting ideas from his stores and his competitors and passing them on to his partners and employees. As one associate said, "Paul is a walking brainstorm." Since he couldn't communicate well in writing or e-mails, he perfected a network of voicemails. When someone hit on a great idea, she'd dial the central voicemail, which Paul would listen to and forward to the people who needed to hear it. "Talking and listening to each other was the way we got things done."  (3)

What weaknesses did other great people have to work around?

• Leonardo DaVinci had incredible talent, but had terrible problems completing anything. 
• Jack Welch, one of the most admired business leaders of all time, struggled with a stutter. 
• George Lucas, producer and writer of Star Wars, is a great story-teller, but can't spell worth anything. 
• Steven Spielberg is one of the most successful movie directors of all time, but couldn't memorize lines well enough to be in his high school plays. 
• Albert Einstein had trouble with memorization and languages, and was told by a teacher that he'd never amount to anything. 
• Dr. Phil shines in front of a camera and audience, but is very uncomfortable one-on-one, and never felt good about his one-on-one counseling. 
• C.S. Lewis, Cambridge professor and wildly successful author of The Chronicles of Narnia, suffered from what he described as "extreme manual clumsiness." Because of this, and a thumb with only one joint, attempts at making anything ended in frustrating failure. Math was equally elusive. (4) 

We all have weaknesses. We just need to learn how to work around them. Management guru Peter Drucker says, "The specific job of the manager is to make the strengths of people productive and their weaknesses irrelevant." (5) So in job hunting, look for work that both uses your strengths and "makes your weaknesses irrelevant."

Today's Tips:

• Are you aware of your weaknesses? Name some of them.
• Don't get discouraged about your weaknesses. The way schools are conducted, we're often led to believe we've got to be good at everything. We don't.
• Fix the weaknesses you can fix.  
• Work around the weaknesses you can't fix. 
• Concentrate on building and working with your strengths. 

End Notes

(1) Guitar World Presents Van Halen: Van Halen in His Own Words, p. 11. 
(2) Paul Orfalea & Ann Marsh, Copy This!: Lessons from a hyperactive dyslexic who turned a bright idea into one of America's best companies, p. 2. 
(3) Ibid., pp. 54-56.
(4) C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, pp. 12, 137, 186.187.
(5) Peter Drucker, People and Performance: The Best of Peter Drucker on Management.
(6) Picture of Paul Orafalea: According to Wikipedia, "This image is copyrighted. The copyright holder allows anyone to use it for any purpose."