Your Personality Edge
What is an advantage that you have?
As an individual employee, what makes you stand out in a growing sea of competition for fewer jobs?
As an entrepreneur, whether starting solo or building a team, that lets you win and thrive?
As a business, whether a start-up or a growing division in a large multi-national company?
There have been endless topics that claim to address this. Here are a few buckets.
Note: while I believe the concept of a "personality" can translate to larger businesses, I am going to focus on the individual. You, as the reader, are more likely to directly benefit and relate to it. And I believe once that concept has taken root, it will be easier to then see how this expands into larger teams and departments.
Behavioral
This broad bucket ultimately boils down to "do better."
It could be to work more efficiently with better processes. The process can improve quality or quantity of output.
These can be tools to improve your personal productivity via systems or prioritization or time management.
These could also be about being better rested, better physical shape, or just working harder.
Behavioral paths to success can be a source of advantage.
For example, if you are definitely able to outwork your competition such that you produce more, attract more customers, reduce your costs - behavior can be a winning strategy.
More often, it's a way to get to the right level to compete. Meaning, many people don't have their core behaviors or habits set up as a foundation to be competitive. Unfortunately, this can be an endless source of optimization with diminishing returns.
Yes, the right combination of nootropics could give you an edge in mindfulness, but that is unlikely to be a truly compounding benefit for the effort.
Strategic
I consider this more of the "mind" part of individual performance -- a broader intent that true strategy (because strategy has been misdefined and, as a result, watered down).
This can include better goal setting, it can relate to the definition of the right systems (versus teh skills of setting up systems in the first place). This can include defining the right product or offering. It can include your networking strategy -- how to find the right people.
This can include goals, the steps to get to the goals, your insight into the market. It includes the raw brainpower to code better, market more creatively, invest with a competitive advantage through research and intuition.
This is more akin to "product management" where you are the product: thinking about those areas where you can find an opportunity that other people don't have or don't see.
Advantages built on this level of thinking are often more sustainable, but can be harder to do.
As such, it's worthwhile to develop framing and thinking. But the challenge is that, because it can be difficult, it may not always be accessible to everyone.
The right strategy may not be easily executed -- so behavior skills limit bringing the strategy to fruition.
And the challenge, I think, with this is that, while the surface area has room for creating opportunity, it could potentially be too narrow in one respect: other people may just be better at thinking strategically or taking in information, and so you lose on that dimension (it's great if you are world class at this); on the other hand, it also isn't super well constrained -- consider how many different strategic ideas there are out there that don't actually provide much useful guidance.
What's left?
Personality
The personality advantage, I would argue, is one of the few things that is both at your complete fingertips but also little used.
Yet, how we are designed and "wired" might be the only advantage that actually matters.
It's tricky because of a weird paradox.
On the one hand, everyone believes that they really know themselves. As such, there isn't much to mine. And as a result, we look to this external frameworks.
On the other hand, since we have been young, we are instructed that we are all the same; and if we aren't all the same, we should strive to become like everyone else.
This means that we don't know ourselves; and anything that requires us to do this is painful, uncomfortable, and lacking credibility.
After all, how can who we are, just as we are, be any source of advantage?
But this is actually the only remaining advantage we can have.
This advantage does not mean we don't engage in behavioral or strategic optimization. That just knowing who we are is enough.
No, there needs to be real work. But the work is more true and powerful if coming from the fountain of life - our full design.
Once we understand this, we can pursue this with an advantage.
This is more essential now than ever before because AI is so good already at the behavioral.
It will never tire, run out of ideas, lack information. We simply cannot compete on behavior alone against machines.
In terms of certain things strategic, Ai is making the information, ideas, information available to more people. Any arbitrage once possible by knowing how to do something or having a better plan is being competed away.
Youtube, for example, is a treasure trove of people who are giving away their wisdom and lessons learned. Knowledge and the instinct to apply them will not be enough.
However, one's personality, and knowing it, gives one a path forward. It's the roadmap and raw integredient to come up with the plan for your life, even if you have no plan. Even if you have no interest, skills, or habits.
It's the advantage that you were born with, and it may be the key to find the right career, build the business that matters, or develop a culture that wins in the market.
Let's see one of the ways this can work.