It’s human nature to gravitate towards areas that interest us most. These areas become our preferences. However, these preferences, as it relates to problem solving, may become a blind spot and harm you during on-boarding.
Table 1-2 below, from Watkins’ The First 90 Days, is a simple method for assessing your preferences for different kinds of business problems, for identifying your blind spots. Complete this table by assessing your intrinsic interest in solving problems in the domain in question, not by assessing your skills or experience.
Table 1-2
When complete, transpose the values in these 15 cells into the 15 cells in Table 1-3 below, (again from Watkins’ The First 90 Days). E.g. Green Row1-Column1 to Green Row1-Column1.
Table 1-3
Lastly, calculate the totals. If one column total is noticeably lower than the others, this represents a potential blind spot for you.
The row totals represent your preference for various business functions. For example, if Marketing is low but represents a success criteria for you, you need to be cognizant of that develop a mitigation strategy.
Most people are unable to articulate, or don’t really know their preferences. This method provides you with the means to measure what you enjoy and don’t enjoy working on.