Don’t expect a fish to climb a tree

Recently, this quote by Albert Einstein was shared by many of my facebook connections. Coincidentally, apart from seeing this post from Mia Davies in facebook, my CEO also mass-mailed this message, contained in a separate image. I guess this coincidence deserved some reflections on my part.

From an individual perspective, everyone will have areas in which he/she is good at, or interested in. As suggested by many, if we focus on things that we are interested in or good at, we will have a higher possibility of succeeding in that area. Although this is true to some extend, too much emphasis in an area of interest may cause resistance in trying out other areas, which could have been complementing. For instance, if I were to focus on developing software alone, my deficiency with the English language may result in my software not providing clear usage instructions. Hence, as a person, I believe that being agnostic to my abilities will probably help me grow stronger.

The story will be different if I have to work with people having different abilities. This time round, having people focus on areas that they are strong in will yield more throughput. Hence if I can stay religious to my strength as a team player, then my team will have more chances of succeeding. If everyone is expected to work on things that require a large spectrum of capabilities, the throughput will most likely decline as that will result in a significant amount of time spent in people mentoring one another. Furthermore, if insufficient resources and unrealistic deadlines were given to the team, then the team would have failed right from the start.

About Clivant

Clivant a.k.a Chai Heng enjoys composing software and building systems to serve people. He owns techcoil.com and hopes that whatever he had written and built so far had benefited people. All views expressed belongs to him and are not representative of the company that he works/worked for.