Talent: Overcoming the lack of Talent! (Post #4 of 4)

This is Post # 4 from a Series of 4 Posts

Previous post in the series: Talent: Talent-based education system (Post #3 of 4)

Let me tell you a story about one of my team members. We called him Ace!

Ace had a degree in Computer Science and Engineering. He passed with average grades and had come to my organization to write an aptitude test in the computer language C. His performance in the aptitude test was not extraordinary, but he managed to scrape through. During his interview, I discovered that his communication skills were below average, but he demonstrated an exceptional attitude. Looking back, I think I hired Ace for his attitude more than his technical skills. Ace went through the Induction Program and was deployed to one of the projects.

His performance assessment for the first, the second and the third year in the company was "Below Expectations". One thing that kept him from being fired was that he was a very hard worker. He would walk into the office at 8 AM each morning and leave only by 9 PM. He had very few friends in the company and that was probably because he would talk less. He would take very short lunch and coffee breaks and would be immersed in software programs all through the day.

He caught my attention because his work timings matched with mine, well, almost. I would walk in at 9 AM and leave by 9 PM most days. One day, in his first year in the company, I bumped into Ace while he was leaving for the day. I started a conversation and realized that he lived close to my home and that he was relying on the city bus service to get home. I offered to drop him that night and continued to drop him home many nights in the coming days, months and years. Each time we were riding together, I would ask him what he learned and he would passionately describe his experience.

In Ace's fourth year at the company, my company CEO assigned me a task of measuring the skill levels of all employees in the company. The objective was to find out who the most critical person was for each team.

I designed and developed a system to measure the skill levels by evaluating the employee's relative rank on each hard skill and their capability to solve problems (defects) in various live products/projects (to determine capability and eventually the criticality factor). When I started evaluating the software programming team, I discovered that Ace was ranked #1, in the programming team! While his skills ratings were not the highest, Ace was the only person in the team who knew his way around all the live products like the back of his hand. That year, Ace received a handsome performance bonus and he was very happy. I was also very happy for Ace.

One thing about working in organizations is that you tend to get multiple chances when compared to a school or college. That is because, in the school, you get only one chance to do well at the examination (even though you have many opportunities to learn!). Your performance in the examination determines your grade and your grade stays stuck to you for a lifetime. On the other hand, in an organization, you face an examination each day but you never get graded. How well you do a task depends on the outcome. If you get the expected outcome, you have done well, else you keep trying till you get the outcome. This is why I say, you get many chances at work.

So, an individual's performance at work really has nothing to do with one's grades in college and a perceived lack of talent can be overcome. Ace knew his shortcomings. He knew that he did not possess any great talent but he successfully overcame his lack of talent by sheer hard work and persistence. Ace made it because he was determined to make it, at all costs, so he did not spare any effort in the process.

So, the lesson here is that, if you feel that you don't possess the necessary talent for a job, you can overcome that by hard work and persistence.

End of Series