I pulled the wrench to the left and it slipped off the head and I wracked my knuckles, pulling the skin off two fingers. I reminded myself, “I hate mechanical work in tight places.” After a week of asking all my mechanical friends for advice, “Googling”, and working hard on my project I successful rebuilt my lawnmower engine. While I successfully completed the task it was with no love or joy, and honestly, I wasn’t any good at it. There’s so much I didn’t understand about engines – I was in over my head despite a successful outcome this one time.

Successful managers place the right person in the right role for excellent outcomes. Don’t settle for mediocre or “good enough”! Just because it fits or you can make it work doesn’t mean this is where you should be or where you should be focusing your time.
Highly trained, niche cybersecurity experts, are sometimes wasting their time doing low skilled tasks that an entry level employee could perform. The experts are frustrated and don’t have the support they need. Companies don’t have the right types of on-the-job (OJT) training and mentoring programs to diversify roles and responsibilities, costs, and train up the next generation. Discuss this with your employees, weave in your interns and those that wish to fold into the team, and come up with a plan to grow the team.
Some employees have specific skills and abilities that must be accommodated and championed for them to be their best, often missed in our “busy” work lives. I once had shift work where we measured success by how many reports could be generated each day by a employee. One employee could only generated two thirds that of everyone else – always very detailed and thorough reports, but always less. He was a detailed oriented worker that just couldn’t adapt to that type of high paced environment. We collaborated to have him automate our work, strategically, in lab operations leading to his leading lab operations vastly improving efficiency for the entire team, innovating new services for clients, and a career path where he has excelled for the rest of his life. Right person in the right role!
Let’s get personal as we round out this blog – are you headed in the right direction for your career? If you’re new I often ask folks if they love working with technology and data more than that of people and presentations and politics? This determines, high level, initially – if you’re pursuing an engineering or managerial path. Then ask yourself, what is your focus and how are you proofing that out and developing that in everything you’re doing? Don’t go to college and get a degree in who knows what, get a degree that screams this is what I’m about, and this is the internship that reinforces it, and this is the personal side project(s) I’ve done because I’m passionate and focused on my path and goals. Make sure as you navigate this direction you’re in the right direction, and it’s a solid fit.
If you find you’re in your ‘teacher education’ practicum stage and it’s not a good fit, be bold and courageous and figure out what is a good fit and make the change – once you find the right fit and role you can excel and be the best you can be!