Not on My Vision Board
What’s your accidental competence?
On Sunday I learned how to fix a toilet cistern. This was not on my vision board.
I had no ambition to understand valves, diaphragms or mysterious plastic mechanisms hidden behind a tiled panel.
But there was a problem and I became the person responsible for solving it.
A job which would have taken a competent plumber 15 minutes (but cost me £200) took me two hours (cost me just a few quid for the parts) and gave me a new skill.
Mickey Heppell – toilet doctor!
I’m calling it Accidental Competence. That’s useful knowledge you gained but you never planned.
You’ve done it – dozens of times.
You didn’t sign up for a course.
You didn’t set a goal.
You didn’t add it to your five-year plan.
Then a problem appeared and life taught you what you needed to know.
Let’s give it up for problems and how they reveal your hidden capability
A money problem and you’re Martin Lewis
A difficult customer and you’re Alex Polizzi
A family crisis and you’re Dear Deirdre
A website wobble and you’re Bill Gates
A problem child and you’re Mary Poppins
At first, you may think ‘I don’t know how to do this.’
Then you look. You ask questions. You experiment. You get it wrong.
You go again. Eventually, the problem is solved.
And you’re not quite the same person you were before it happened.
You became…. an ‘expert’
Perhaps not a world-class professional who should be charging by the hour.
But for that moment, in that situation, you became the expert.
You knew more at the end than you did at the beginning.
Not through ambition.
Through necessity.
Every solved problem leaves behind more than a solution.
It leaves behind knowledge.
Confidence.
Resourcefulness.
And a slightly more capable version of you.
The toilet works.
But that is not the only thing that changed.
What’s your accidental competence?
What can you do now that you never intended to learn?
What problem forced you to become an ‘expert’?
And what’s the problem in front of you today trying to teach you?
I’d like to send a copy of my Sunday Times No.1 bestselling book Flip It – to my favourite comment.
You can share your Accidental Competence in the comments below.
Be Brilliant!
Michael
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