Are you The Whole Potato??

So there was 6 of us in a cab last week on the way to a *networking event and we got onto the subject of Corporate BS. We got onto it because I was in a meeting a couple of days before and in the space of 40 minutes I heard ‘strategic intent’ no less than three times which made me want to scream.....what does that even mean????

And before you know it they’re all flying out:

The Bigger Picture/Blue Sky thinking/Clear Blue Water/Adding Leverage/Touching base/ Outwith (when did this become a word)/Taking stuff ‘offline’ (or talking about it later).....

I’m sure you can add your own........

But then, my mate Tony, won B*llshit Bingo hands down.....he was told in an interview they were looking for.....THE WHOLE POTATO.....

Now, I have heard of people being team players, human resources and many other things but I have never, ever heard a comparison of people to potatoes before and I love potatoes so it got me thinking.....

There are loads of different sorts of potatoes, red ones, whites, yellows, even blues....

Some potatoes are great for making chips, some great for mash, some are actually called baking potatoes (rubbish for Sunday lunch boiled potatoes), new potatoes great hot or cold.....

Sometimes you can add things to a potato, like a fried egg to chips - awesome!! but if you add a fried egg to mash, that would just be wrong.....do you see where I am going?? Employing a load of ‘good all rounders’ is no route to a diverse workforce.

People are people, and they can be really good at some things and need more support in other things (I think the word is specialise?) and that is OK. They can work really well with some situations and not so well in others......you wouldn’t add a waffle to your Sunday roast would you?!

Or put a sales person on the production line.

Now I know there are potatoes on the market which are labelled as ‘Good All Rounders’ but are they, really?? Would a ‘good all rounder’ be a real substitute for a jersey mid with your lamb chops???

Now, my mate Tony never did take that job...and I’m glad because the Good All Rounder, I believe could be spectacularly average at everything....and he is better than that! We all are.

I believe a great team has specialists who compliment each other’s skill sets...where one person can support another in something, they can equally be supported in something else.

Take us Her Invitation Old Timers, one loves public speaking, one loves videos, one loves the written word and Lynette has just done her 50th FB live- and that’s OK because we get it all done - we know each other’s strength and weaknesses and support each other in them. We’re a TEAM!!

SO my question to you.....are you feeling a bit like you’re stuck being a good all rounder, or being taken for one?

Do you long to break out and specialise in your own thing?

Are you feeling like a jersey mid headed for the deep fat fryer??

Maybe you are even a sweet potato in an all rounder jacket................come and talk to us, our workshops make real differences to real lives, just like yours.