Understand Most, Master Few

When you think about a business, there are a lot of processes that are extremely important.

Within all of the processes, Leaders typically fail in one of two ways.

Understanding or Mastery.

This is how they tend to miss the mark.

Not Understanding Enough

There are so many processes that are important to make a business succeed, and they get more complex as you grow.

• Sales
• Marketing
• Accounts Receivable
• Accounts Payable
• Accounting
• Legal
• Operations
• HR

This is just a tiny list of departments.

In all honesty, it is too much to know in general.

However, most people in Leadership positions decide not to understand anything about most of these departments.

They will generally focus on an area that they are better at.

When this occurs, typically disaster is soon to follow.

If you don't understand enough about all of these different departments, many things can go wrong.

• Inability to hold people accountable
• Inability to determine benchmarks
• Lacking the ability to see growth opportunities
• Failure to see broken processes

To avoid this, Leaders need to make sure that they understand enough to be able to know how things flow through each department.

Understanding this flow leads to knowing how things "should" work, and then seeing when there are issues.

If you truly understand the Flow, it also allows you to help teams plan and adapt if things go wrong, or are required to change for a wide variety of reasons.

However, sometimes Leaders go too far in the other direction.

Attempting To Master Too Much

Some Leaders see the need to understand all the different aspects of the business but then try to become masters of it.

However, this is simply not possible to accomplish.

The skills and understandings required to do all of these aspects of business exceptionally are simply too varied.

Different types of people tend to excel in certain parts of businesses, and it is those aspects that tend to give them difficulties in mastering other parts.

When you try to become a Master in all of these things, you will end up mediocre at all of them.

Worse, you could also miss many opportunities due to weaknesses (which is something we all have, even if we don't like to admit it).

This mindset also tends to leave Leaders having difficulty giving responsibilities to other individuals.

Since you are only one person, you will always become limited in what you can do.

The Middle Ground

The solution is to find the middle ground.

You need to know only enough about every aspect of the business to be able to effectively lead.

Then, as a Leader, you need to focus specifically on what you can truly master.

This mixture allows you to fully contribute greatly to the business to your highest capabilities, while also being able to rely on other great individuals to help you.

It allows you to be able to see and understand every other aspect of the business, without feeling like "you" need to do everything.

The key to your success is to Understand Most aspects of the business, without needing to Master all of it and simply focusing on what you are exceptional.

Where do you fall on this spectrum?

Are you attempting to master too much?

Do you understand enough about the different aspects of the business you ar in?

What about other Leaders in your organization?

Can you guide them into what they can master?

Can you help others understand the varied aspects of the business so you can all be on the same page?

Always think about things not only from your perspective as a Leader but also from the perspectives of all of the Leaders (or potential Leaders) in your organization.