Where to focus? Strength or Weakness?

This is a topic raised by one of my readers some time ago, and kindly reminded to me by my mother.  What is my strategy regarding strengths & weaknesses?

 

- Develop my weaknesses?  (e.g. take an assisting, observing role for a chinese SOE client)

- Move to areas where I can play to my strengths?  (e.g. take a leading, coaching role for a multinational client)

 

Looking deeper, there are more choices to be made.  For example, when picking my reading material, do I read Businessweek, Harvard Business Review, and interesting business books or inspirational novels?  Or should I suffer myself through chinese children's books, and slowly reading a single chinese news article a day (or week!) to increase my reading skills?

 

Clearly working for Capgemini I have made part of this choice - to play to some of my strength, thereby finding an employer willing to hire me, which keeps me clothed and fed while I live in this country.  But there still remain many choices to be made with my time and efforts.

 

Staying on the periphery of my comfort zone, I learn the most.  Do I impress the most though?  Or deliver the most value?  Not necessarily so.  Some managers will notice what I am doing, and respect me for growing.  Other managers might see only my unfamiliarity, and perceive me to be an incompetent.

 

I feel that playing to my strengths, I would increase my promotion/salary potential and reputation in the short term.  Long term though, it still has to be better to develop my weaknesses.  I say this because I'm working on the theory that people straddling specialisms are few.  For example, the cusp of business and technology.  Such people who know a fair amount about both are rare.  Add chinese & western culture/business, and chinese & english language, and that's a couple more rare cusps to throw into the mix.  Sitting in the middle of all that - has got to be rare, and thereby valuable.  (a friend told me a chinese phrase to this effect recently.. wu xi xxx gui I believe it was - I have forgotten the third word)

 

That's really what I'm doing here... breeding myself into something quite unique (well, at least rare).  People often ask me what I will do when my 5 year plan is up.  My intention is that having developed my 'cusps', I don't know where the world will take me.  A number of options should open up, either directly related, or seemingly unrelated.

 

Trouble is, any employer will typically prefer the short-term view.  They will want to leverage me for all I'm worth today, and in a sense let me worry about tomorrow.  I'll have to be mindful of what I can influence or control, if I really want to develop more for the long term.