Our Forte

June 20, 2018, by Banchiwosen Woldeyesus

If we are not practically beaming,

                        When we do our work,

                                              All the time,

                             Or most of the time,

Then we have not found our forte.

If we do our work grudgingly,

      We have not found our thing.

Never stop looking for it.

                 When you see it,

                    You will know it.

            _Gravitate towards your heart’s desire

When we see sport players in any field and they are excellent players in their chosen play field, they are exceptional in that field because they love their specific sports more than others. They play the game all the time. Even though they may see another game or play another one, the love they have for their game is incomparable to others.

That is why, we see different people being experts in different areas. A person cannot be an expert on everything. That is impossible. An individual shows an astounding ability and talent when he does his work with passion and he does it all the time or most of the time. When this happens, we see insurmountable ability behind the man.

“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” Aristotle

Two friends have started their own business and doing their thing for quite some time now. Their work is doing well. But in the last couple of days, one is thinking of changing something in the strategy. He is thinking a lot about that but he doesn’t know how to bring the subject to his friend.

The other one while observing his friend for days now thought that something is wrong and on his friend’s mind. He waited for few days patiently for his friend to talk to him. But it didn’t happen. So he initiated the talk himself.

“You are not alright these days. What is wrong?”

“I am fine. Why? Is there anything wrong with our work? Have customers complained?”

“I am not talking about our work, I am talking about you. For the last few days, you are not fully on the job. You are thinking about something all the time. Your face and your whole demeanor says that. So tell me what is on your mind.”

“I don’t know how to tell you.”

“Just like always tell me what is worrying you.”

“I don’t want you to get the wrong idea and be cross with me.”

“We will discuss like always, but I won’t be angry.”

“OK.  What I wanted to talk to you is, in our business I receive customers and entertain them while you do the business’s account, am I right?”

“Yes. Are you telling me I have made a mistake? You love numbers. Are you missing them?”

“No.  You have not made a mistake. But have you not observed that we are not working on our area of expertise?”

“What do you mean?”

“You just told me now that I love numbers more than you. So why am I not doing the accounting part in our business?”

“Because we have agreed in the beginning to start like that.”

“I know. But I am asking you to change that. Even though we both have an accounting degree, I am the one who have more experience in the field for years. Before we established our business, I have been doing accounting and only that for the last company that I worked. And you know that. While you also have experience, it is not like me. Because you have told me, you have gravitated towards customer service in the last 2 or 3 years of your final job. In fact, after taking short term customer service training’s you have left your accounting job and joined the customer service team.”

“You know me so well.”

“Yes I do. That is what I am saying. From now on, let me do the accounting work and you do all things related to our customers. You know they are better-off when they talk to you. Just like the numbers are happier with me.”

“So, you are saying you are cleverer in numbers than me?”

“Yes. Even though you do the work, the level of satisfaction that I get when I work on numbers is so much more than you. Just like I have observed how you get satisfied from talking to a single customer.”

“You have won me.”

“By what?”

“By your idea.”

“Really?

“Yes. From now on I am only going to take care of customers without feeling like I am stealing your job and you go back to your precious numbers.”