Delegate Everything Except Genius

Taken from How The Best Get Better by Dan Sullivan.

All human beings spend their following lives in the following zones of activity: incompetence, competence, excellence and unique ability.  The success or failure of an individual’s life depends upon how much time that person spends in each of these zones.  Unsuccessful people spend most of their lives in the zone of Incompetence.  Successful individuals spend most of their lives in the zones of competence and excellence.  And geniuses—those who achieve extraordinary results during their lives—spend almost all of their lives in the zone of unique ability.

There are different forms of genius. When most people hear the word genius, they think of IQ—which measure genius in logical reasoning.  However, there are many other forms of genius that are not measured by IQ: spatial, musical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, improvisational, and others.  In the 21^st century, one of the most powerful forms of genius will be entrepreneurial genius—the ability to create value in the form of new products and services.  All forms of genius depend upon the total focus of products and services.  Anyone who identifies his or her zone of Unique Ability, and then spends ten years of concentrated effort within that zone, will begin to think, communicate, and perform in ways that other people see as genius.

Unfortunate childhood lessons must be overcome. Many individuals are never able to identity their zone of unique ability, let alone concentrate on it, because they are trapped by childhood training.  They learned that the secret to success in life is to work on your weakness.  Unfortunately, focusing on one’s weaknesses usually leads to a preoccupation with mediocre behavior, performance, and results.  Focusing on one’s weaknesses leads to a constant struggle with oneself throughout life—accompanied by a sense of deficiency, failure and guilt.  In this lifelong pursuit to remedy weaknesses, most individuals completely neglect their inherent areas of Unique Ability.  As a result, their lives are filled with a sense of frustration, wasted potential, and missed opportunity.

Focus on uniqueness; delegate everything else. The best entrepreneurs in the world have discovered that the key to success is to focus totally on areas where you exhibit Incompetence, competence, or even excellence.  Delegate this work to those who have a unique ability in those areas.  Unique ability activities are those that we absolutely love doing, that give us more energy than they consume, and that continue to produce greater levels of skill and better results in relation to the amount of time we invest.  When we are in our unique ability zone, we experience constant growth, increasing confidence, and an ability to innovate solutions.  Additionally, we experience a sense of simplicity, clarity, and serenity, which deeps in relation to the amount of time we spend in the zone.

Leading with your unique ability leads to genius teamwork.  The unique ability encourages and forces us to delegate everything else in our lives to individuals who have strengths where we have weaknesses.  In this process, the unique talents of other individuals are brought to the forefront—and those individuals are encouraged to go through the same process of delegation.  What gradually develops is not only teamwork, but unique ability teamwork in which each individual is able to spend the major part of his or her lifetime creating value for others using their unique ability.