Play to Strengths…Outsource Weaknesses

For many years I have worked with organizations to determine what their core competencies are as a way to determine what it makes sense to outsource. A very important part of success is understanding this balance so that you can invest in your core competencies as an organization and strengthen them and hire others to do those things which are not core competencies.

The same thing is true for us as individuals. It is very important to understand what your personal strengths are and to focus on building those personal strengths. Those strengths are what will drive success.

We actually do this all the time already. Most people when faced with the job of moving the piano to the new house hire piano movers. Piano movers have the right combination of technology, process and the individual strength of the workers doing the actual movement. In doing it, most people don't think twice about it. They believe that makes sense given the type of task and the cost of a mistake. The same thing is true when you have a plumbing leak in the house. Most people don't worry about the fact that they're not plumbers. They simply call one up to come in again with the right set of tools and the right set of skills and repair the problem. People think it makes sense given the specialized skill required and the cost of a mistake.

We need to think the same way about reading and writing. If you need to gather information and have difficulty reading you may consider outsourcing the process. Actually, when you use services like Audible and Learning Ally you're doing exactly that. You are essentially hiring someone to read the material and translate it into a form that you can use. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who believe that unlike hiring a piano mover or a plumber, it is ‘cheating’  to do this for reading. The same thing is true for writing. Writing is a process that allows you to take ideas put them into words in a way that other people can read them and understand your idea. People with dyslexia tend to be very strong with the ideation part of the process but find the translation to the written word very difficult. It makes sense then to put your ideas down and have someone like a proofreader help translate those into readable text that communicates the idea. Unfortunately, many people believe that this is ‘ cheating.’ Interestingly most people do not view using a graphic designer to create imagery for an idea as cheating. And the use of a speechwriter is well accepted universally.

So, I encourage all of you to play to your strengths and outsource your weaknesses. Do it consciously and embrace it. Don't allow people to pass judgement on it and remember the piano mover and the plumber.

We will be talking about this a lot in future articles. One of the important things to understand about dyslexia is that is there are a set of dyslexic superpowers. These are extraordinary skills that people with dyslexia seem to have. It is very important that you build on those skills and outsource your weaknesses . Whether you are a parent helping a child with dyslexia or an adult with dyslexia this idea is a cornerstone to success.