Do Business Better

22Exploiting Your Talent Stack

Just like your business personality tilts in different directions, you have varying degrees of skill elsewhere. Your skill may be natural or it may be through diligent effort. Doesn't matter how you got your tools; it matters how you employ them.

We'll refer to your entire combination of skills and attributes as your talent stack. I can't take credit for that term. The “talent stack” concept was created by the same guy who created Dilbert, the comic strip character.

In his book, Win Bigly, Scott Adams of Dilbert fame alludes to “talent stack.” He coined the term in an earlier book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.

The Talent Stack Concept by Scott Adams

There are two ways to make yourself valuable:

1. Be the best in the world at one thing, which is very difficult to do.
2. Develop a variety of skills that work well together, thereby creating synergy.

Mr. Adams uses himself as an example. He says:

I'm a famous syndicated cartoonist who doesn't have much artistic talent, and I've never taken a college‐level writing class. But few people are good at both drawing and writing. When you add in my ordinary business skills, my strong work ethic, my risk tolerance, and my reasonably good sense of humor, I'm fairly unique. And in this case that uniqueness has commercial value.

From Scott Adams to a different Scott, my good friend since high school. Scott and I were roommates during our early professional days. He was a law student and budding ...