“What’s the one thing I should look for in a new hire?”
“What’s the most important skill I need to reach my career goals?”
“What’s the one characteristic that sets successful people apart from their less successful peers?”
It doesn’t matter how you ask the question, the answer is always the same:
“The ability to handle ambiguity.”
Wait. Actually, that’s not exactly right.
The exact skill you need to be successful is the ability to use what you have to get you need.
Let’s be very specific about this:
This is not the ability to handle uncertainty. The ability to handle uncertainty is the ability to choose the best option from a given set of choices.
And this is not entire the ability to handle ambiguity, either. The ability to handle ambiguity is the ability to figure out what the set of choices should be and then choose the best option. It’s entirely possible to take an ambiguous situation and maintain it, or work a part of it, while leaving most of the situation unresolved.
That’s not quite the recipe for success now, is it?
No, the people who truly win are the ones who look at the gap between what they want and what they have, and figure out what is the next resource I need, and what next step that I can take, all on my own, will bring that resource to me?
Napoleon Hill talks about this. It’s his core premise in Think and Grow Rich. And you know who else talks about this?
Everybody.
It’s in just about any adventure story you can imagine. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry struggles to figure out how to get past a hulking dragon with just his wand… until he figures out that he can use his wand to bring his broomstick to him so he can fly around it.
That’s just one small example… there are countless others.
My point being, we are surrounded on all sides that ingenuity is best employed when you use it to help you move forward in your objective.
Yet what do we do at work?
Not that, that’s for sure!
Ask yourself true: how long has it been since you or a close coworker has decried your lack of budget, manpower, knowledge, or power?
Stop asking others to give you resources… go get them instead! Assuming you have 100% responsibility for a successful outcome (which you do), make your next move one that unlocks a better set of potential outcomes than the ones you face now.
Take it one step at a time.
If you’re truly using what you have to get what you need, then even if what you need is a new job, it will come to you.
So ask yourself: on a scale of one to ten, how good are you at using what you’ve got to get what you need… one step at a time?
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Good words! I have been trying lately to really be self-reliant. I think, “What could I do to finish this project if no one else was available to help me?” (This happens frequently when clients don’t send collateral material.) And then the answer comes to me, and I do that thing, I get what I need, and I finish the project. It’s empowering.