Both individuals and organizations have core competencies that lead to competitive advantages. It is often tempting to venture beyond those qualities when we have not built upon and strengthen the core.
In the book The Game Changer, author A.G. Lafley states that it is not sufficient to just identify a business's core strengths but rather they must be worked at and enhanced constantly. With this practice, those strengths become competitive advantages.
In his excellent book, Good to Great, author Jim Collins tells us that in building a business we must protect our core and stimulate progress. Growth is great but we must be very careful not to abandon our core strength and our core competency.
The same rule applies to individuals. Once we understand our own personal strength, we need to constantly nurture and work on it so that we have our own personal competitive strategy. For some that strength might be intellect, for others it might be the willingness to work hard. Still for others, it might be compassion and understanding.
In both cases, companies and individuals, it is critical to understand and constantly work at our core competency and then look for and stimulate progress. If you are seeking to understand your own strengths, I recommend the series of works by Marcus Buckingham titled "First Break All the Rules" and "Now Discover Your Strengths." In this series, the authors help the readers to get a grasp on their own strengths so that they can take advantave of them and use them for progress.
Core competencies exist for everyone. The challenge is to work on them.
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