Don't Get Too Hung Up on "Strengths"

We often say, "My strength is X, so I'm choosing this path," or someone asks us, "How can we win by leveraging Japan's strengths?"

We are often told that we should focus on our strengths, and building on past experience makes sense both in theory and in terms of cost-effectiveness.

However, I think that clinging to strengths can also become a "constraint." This is because it can easily lead to the conclusion, "I have no strengths, so I won't take on the challenge."

If you look only at your strengths, you can choose only paths within the range of the skills and abilities you have built up so far. That means you can choose your future only as an extension of your past, and that the past determines the future entirely.

But is that really true?

The future should be far more open with possibilities, and we should be able to change it through our own will.

For example, just because your major during four years as an undergraduate was in the humanities, there is no reason to limit your career for the next several decades to that major alone. If you are interested in another field, you can simply study it. It may be hard at first, and it may feel like poor cost-performance, but if you study seriously for about two years, you can build a new strength.

The same goes for business. In an area where a market is rapidly emerging, such as Climate Tech, I think it is important to throw yourself into the opportunity regardless of the technologies and strengths you currently have. If the opportunity looks big, and if it is a problem that needs to be solved, shouldn't you bet on that field whether or not Japan has strengths there?

Moreover, by throwing yourself into the opportunity, you may come to realize, "Actually, I can use this ability of mine here," or "Actually, Japan has this kind of technology." In a sense, our strengths are discovered retroactively, and quite often "strengths are discovered" after the fact, in hindsight. For example, "It turns out I was better at sales than most people," or "It turns out that parts made by Japanese small and medium-sized companies could be used in new energy storage facilities" are things you only find out after throwing yourself into an opportunity.

As you take on challenges by throwing yourself into opportunities, your new strengths should also be honed. Especially in a new field with a large opportunity, just a few months of hard work should be enough to make you one of the leading experts in that field in Japan.

That is precisely why I think it is better to be mindful of the following:

• Look at "opportunities," not at "strengths"
• Be open to the possibilities of the "future," rather than being overly conscious of and trapped by the "past"

And if you believe that an opportunity or a future is there, then by jumping into it, you can discover your strengths and build new ones.

(Addendum)

That said, we tend to look at our strengths. I think there are three reasons for this:

• We are strongly conscious of cost-performance, especially of cost
• We are more conscious of short-term results than of long-term results
• We are more conscious of the win rate than of the size of the profit when we win

On the first point, cost-performance, I do think we should consider cost when we can expect only moderate returns. In other words, in many situations I think it is better to be conscious of strengths. On the other hand, when returns could jump dramatically, the relative importance of cost declines. So my point this time is that it is better to set strengths aside for the time being only in situations where you feel the opportunity is large.

On the second point, long-term versus short-term results, if you try to produce results in the short term, you do have to think based on the abilities you have now. But over the long term, you can cultivate strengths in the meantime, so I think it becomes possible to look at the opportunity.

Finally, if you are strongly conscious of the win rate, you end up fighting only battles you can win or battles you cannot lose. Then I think you end up focusing on "B+ problems that seem solvable even though their impact is small" rather than "A+ problems that have a large impact and need to be solved." But if a problem would have a large impact and generate large profits when you win, it should be worth betting on even if the win rate is somewhat low.

That said, I understand that many established companies have organizational incentives for avoiding losses and failures that are too strong, which makes it hard for them to place such bets, but I think that should be treated as a separate kind of problem.

These habits of thought and biases inevitably creep in, including for me. That is exactly why I personally think we need to consciously recognize our habits and make an effort to break free from them.