Its old news that late 2008 and most of 2009 saw the worst economic downturn since the great depression in the 1930s. The stunningly large numbers of corporate and personal bankruptcies, crashing financial markets, currency devaluation, massive layoffs, work outsourcing to "best cost" centers and rising unemployment are things that most of us have not witnessed in our lifetimes. For many people these things have hit us personally….its not just impersonal news stories, it is happening in our own cities and in our own lives. To say that these things are extremely disconcerting is a gross understatement!

When dramatic and disconcerting things like this happen, we as human beings, tend to react in a dramatically defensive manner. We create bailout packages, rules, laws, organizations and structures that try to protect what we currently have and the lifestyle that we are or have been used to. This is self preservation behavior which is "pre-wired" into our human brains. However, this is not the correct response. What we should be doing is re-inventing ourselves to take advantage of our strengths and apply these reinventions to our lives, careers and industries.

Take a look at the North American auto manufacturing business which employed thousands of people and created billions of dollars for its owners and the local and global economies. Its not hard to show a correlation between the rising cost of workers (wage increases, workplace concessions, benefits packages, retirement programs, etc.), declining productivity of those same workers and the decline in the profitability of the car manufacturing business. Now don't get me wrong, I am not a union basher as I do believe that the role of the union can be important to our workforce in certain circumstances. But in this case, think about all the money and effort that went into the;

- Creation of the unions

- The work actions that were staged by the workers to protect the rights, wages and benefits of the workers

- The counter measures staged by the owners to try and minimize worker cost and protect profit margins

- The laws that were enacted to protect the workers and more laws that were enacted to protect the corporations

- Bailout packages from government

- Subsidies from the government

- Tariffs on foreign competitive products

I don't have any figures for this but the time, effort, and cost of this is astronomical!!!

What do you think the results would have been if the auto industry would have taken the astronomical amount of money and effort spent on these things and applied it instead to innovation and re-invention programs. I know at this point it is speculative but I believe in the creativeness and inventiveness of the human spirit and I firmly believe that the auto industry would be in a much better position today had they done this. They would be significantly advanced in technology and manufacturing techniques, their workers would be retrained and advanced, they would not be fighting over wages and benefits because they would have invented ways to manufacture better products at lower costs in shorter timeframes at higher margins thus paying for the higher cost workers with their higher margins.

What does this have to do with your Strength Zone? A few things;

1. When bad things happen to you in your career, don't panic and move into a defensive, protectionist mode. Instead, go on the offensive. Re-evaluate your current career against your Strength Zone. How can you apply your Strength Zone differently and more productively to ensure that you are marketable. Be innovative and re-invent yourself. Get back out there into the marketplace and always leverage your Strength Zone in everything you do.

2. Don't wait for something bad to happen. Constantly evaluate your effectiveness and how you are applying your Strength Zone to the different roles that you have. Always innovate, re-invent and tweak your performance to get better.

3. Finally, until we instill a culture of working within our Strength Zone, innovation and re-invention within ourselves and our corporations we will always remain at high risk of extinction in the marketplace.

“As for finding the sweet spot, many people are stuck in a rut and it does impact the bottom line in terms of productivity and innovation. Somehow we have learned to equate success with money and material wealth at the expense of self-actualization. What we end up is with people doing work that they are not the best at and perpetuate a culture of finger pointing. We end up striving to preserve a shadow of oneself.” Peter Chrapchinski  

Are you working in a high stress workplace that is full of finger pointing, backbiting and cover ups? Do you want to make a positive change but not change employers?

What you need to do is strive to ensure that everyone is working in their areas of strength in your workplace. When people are outside of their area of strength they are underperforming, demotivated, edgy, stressed and continually looking for others to blame for their non-performance. People do not want to take accountability for their poor performance because they are worried for their jobs and they are trying to preserve their self worth and their egos.

The key to changing this environment is to build trust between workers. Building this culture of trust starts by helping each individual understand their areas of strength and showing them how to leverage these strengths into their role in the workplace so that they can be successful and productive. Without this change, the workplace is doomed to mediocre work performance at best and at worst, a slide into obscurity and irrelevance.

With this strength based focus, employees will improve their performance and gain confidence in themselves and their fellow workers. This leads to a culture of trust, openness, candor, cooperation and proficiency. This culture allows a corporation to drive towards success as all its employees are striving together to continuously improve each other and the business.