“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Now that you have been introduced to the 11 players and understand their roles, you should be in a much better position to calculate your CSQ score. Do it now if you haven’t already. Once you do, come back to this section. How did you fare? If you scored well, then congratulations. But if you didn’t, then do you understand why you didn’t and have a better picture of the way forward? I think you are mature enough to know what to do. Nonetheless, I will give you two broad ways in which you can progress:
1. You can try to improve on your players (skills). This is the common management theory or personality development pitch. But I have some reservations about it. I agree that some things can be learnt over time and with practice. But others can be very difficult to learn, not because they involve complex concepts and calculations, but because they clash with your hard-wired nature. They are not difficult per se, but difficult for your personality. Let’s take the skills of marketing your work or alignment. Some people just cannot do this because they feel it would conflict with their value or belief system too greatly. For this reason they may not even be willing to improve their CSQ scores if required.
2. If you are one of those people and you cannot improve certain skills to the desired level, all you can do is look for the right pitch. The right pitch could be a better suited role or division within the same company, a job at a different company, or even a new career choice if your core strengths and skills warrant it.
I personally believe that at any stage of your career, if you focus on your core strengths, you move ahead, but not if it’s not the right pitch. Finding the right pitch is not always easy, and requires some experimentation. If you are unwilling to experiment, then most probably there are some fears holding you back. If that is you, then it is important that you first learn how to romance with fear.