Where Do I Belong?

...most people, especially highly gifted people, do not really know where they belong until they are well past their mid-twenties.

A small number of people know very early where they belong.  Mathematicians, musicians, and cooks, for instance, are usually mathematicians, musicians, and cooks by the time they are four or five years old.  Physicians usually decide on their careers in their teens, if not earlier.  But most people, especially highly gifted people, do not really know where they belong until they are well past their mid-twenties.  By that time, however, they should know the answers to the three questions: What are my strengths?  How do I perform? and, What are my values?  And then they can and should decide where they belong.

Or rather, they should be able to decide where they do not belong.  The person who has learned that he or she does not perform well in a big organization should have learned to say to to a position in one.  The person who has learned that he or she is not a decision maker should have learned to say no to a decision making assignment.

Equally important, knowing the answer to these questions enables a person to say to an opportunity, an offer, or an assignment, "Yes, I will do that.  But this is the way I should be doing it.  This is the way it should be structured.  This is the way the relationships should be.  These are the kind of results you should expect from me and in this time frame, because this is who I am."

Successful careers are not planned.  They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values.  Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person--hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre--into an outstanding performer.

ACTION POINT:  Understand your strengths, how you perform and your values to know where you belong.

Values and Strengths

What one does well--even very well and successfully--may not fit with one's value system.

A person's strengths and the way that person performs rarely conflict; the two are complementary.  But there is sometimes a conflict between a person's values and his or her strengths.  What one does well--even very well and successfully--may not fit with one's value system.  In that case, the work may not appear to be worth devoting one's life to (or even a substantial portion thereof).

If I may, allow me to interject a personal note.  Many years ago, I too had to decide between my values and what I was doing successfully.  I was doing very well as a young investment banker in London in the mid 1930s, and the work clearly fit my strengths.  Yet I did not see myself making a contribution as an asset manager. People, I realized, were what I valued, and I saw not point in being the richest man in the cemetery.  I had not money an no other job prospects.  Despite the continuing Depression, I quit--and it was the right thing to do.  

ACTION POINT: Values, in other words, are and should be the ultimate test.

What Are My Values II

To work in an organization whose value system is unacceptable or incompatible with one's own condemns a person both to frustration and to nonperformance.





What is ethical behavior in one kind of organization or situation is ethical behavior in another. But ethics is only part of a value system--especially an organization's value system. To work in an organization whose value system is unacceptable or incompatible with one's own condemns a person both to frustration and to nonperformance.


Consider the experience of a highly successful human resources executive whose company was acquired by a bigger organization. After the acquisition, she was promoted to do the kind of work she did best, which included selecting people for important positions. The executive deeply believed that a company should hire people for such positions form the outside only after exhausting all the inside possibilities. But her new company believed in first looking outside "to bring in fresh blood." There is something to be said for both approaches--in my experience, the proper one is to do some of both. They are, however, fundamentally incompatible--not as policies but as values. They bespeak different views of the relationship between organizations and people; different views of the responsibility of an organization to its people and their development; and different views of a person's most important contribution to an enterprise. After several years of frustration, the executive quit--at considerable financial loss. Her values and the values and the values of the organization simply were not compatible.


Similarly, whether a pharmaceutical company tries to obtain results by asking constant, small improvements or by achieving occasional, highly expensive, and risky "breakthroughs" is not primarily an economic question. The results of either strategy may be pretty much the same. At bottom, there is conflict between a value system that sees the company's contribution in terms of helping physicians do better what they already do and a value system that is oriented toward making scientific discoveries.


ACTION POINT: Understand your organizations values to ensure compatibility with your own.

What Are My Values

I refuse to see a pimp in the mirror in the morning when I shave.

To be able to manage yourself, you finally have to ask, What are my values?  This is not a question of ethics.  With respect to ethics, the rules are the same for everybody, and the test is a simple one.  I call it the "mirror test."  

In the early years of this century, the most highly respected diplomat of all the great powers was the German ambassador in London.  He was clearly destined for great things--to become his country's foreign minster, at lest, if not its federal chancellor.  Yet in 1906 he abruptly resigned rather than preside over a dinner given by the diplomatic corps for Edward VII.  The king was a notorious womanizer and made it clear what kind of dinner he wanted.  The ambassador is reported to have said, "I refuse to see a pimp in the mirror in the morning when I shave."

That is the mirror test. 

ACTION POINT:  Ethics requires that you ask yourself, What kind of person do I want to see in the mirror in the morning?