Welcome to The FreshGigs Weekly Recap. We know how busy you are, so every week we’ll help you get caught up on some of the best career related stories from around the web. Weekend reading from last week that you can apply for the week ahead.
Combatting the Holy Grail Syndrome: What I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Business (HubSpot)
Peter Sena describes the Holy Grail Syndrome as, “a condition that causes a business owner to set out on futile quests to mine a single solution to his or her troubles.” In simple terms, it’s when an entrepreneur assumes that there’s a holy grail to solve any and all business programs—an assumption that Peter himself made as a small business owner. In his latest post for HubSpot, Peter examines the Holy Grail Syndrome in-depth, and discusses five things he wished he knew sooner about being an entrepreneur. Read the article here.
Calling some choices “strategy” and some “execution” is a fruitless distinction.
Article Snippet: If you can avoid the pitfalls of the dreaded Holy Grail Syndrome, them maybe — just maybe — you won’t be on the wrong side of the startup statistics. Know your goals, break them down, and focus on why you started your business in the first place. It’s important for each of us to remember that — try as we might! — we simply cannot do it all. Accept that, and you just might find your potential for success as a founder double overnight.
3 Steps For Bridging “The Confidence Gap” (99u)
Having confidence vs. being less sure of your talents and abilities is the “make or break” difference maker for the majority of career-related endeavors: confidence before heading to an interview, confidence when giving a presentation, confidence when speaking to your manager, and more. But… the simple act of building confidence is hard. Meg Duffy explores a few ways to get around this with 3 simple steps for building and sustaining high levels of confidence in her latest article for 99u.
Article Snippet: In their groundbreaking 2014 article and book “The Confidence Gap“ Katty Kay and Claire Shipman outlined the genetic predispositions and environmental factors that contribute to confidence. And, as part of their research, Kay and Shipman found that women take much fewer risks than men, leading to lower confidence levels, which can stifle career growth.
Stop Distinguishing Between Execution and Strategy (HBR)
Execution is strategy—and it’s the message that Roger Martin stresses in his latest article for the Harvard Business Review. People often consider execution and strategy to be two different things, so when the execution fails it’s looked at as a complete, separate entity from the strategy portion. But this shouldn’t be the case: when execution fails, it means that the strategy has also failed—both need to be fixed, because they are the same things. Read the full article here.
Article Snippet: Calling some choices “strategy” and some “execution” is a fruitless distinction. In fact, it is worse than fruitless; it is the source of the observed problems with “execution.” So if organizations experience “bad execution” it is not because they are bad at the discipline of execution. It is because they call it execution.
Playing to Win: What Every Leader can Learn from the Kentucky Wildcats (Forbes)
It’s March, which means it’s time for one of the best sports events of the year: March Madness. This year, the Kentucky Wildcat’s Men’s Basketball team has the opportunity to finish the season (and win the title) with a perfect record—but that doesn’t mean they’ve been on “cruise control” this entire season. A full season means there’s ups-and-downs, and a team like Kentucky has to be both physically and mentally prepared—the latter being a quality most teams and players overlook. Jason Selk writes about mental toughness, and has taken a few lessons from the Wildcat’s season to construct a mental workout that you can practice every-single day to ensure you’re always in “win” mode. Read the article here.
Article Snippet: I encourage my clients to complete daily mental workouts to develop and maintain their mental toughness so that they are always ready to play to win, especially when times are tough. In fact, you don’t really need mental toughness when things are going well, but if you are not cultivating it every day, then it will not be there for you when you need it.