#19 But I don’t have the skills

… to make things happen

Is what a former colleague confessed to me after I told him we wouldn’t be working with him any more. I remember the exact place, at a Groundwork coffee location in Larchmont, a suburb of Los Angeles, some time in the middle of summer. He looked up at me, defeated, and said those words. It had never actually occurred to me until he said it out loud. I actually thought he had all the skills of a salesman and a smart business person. This means he’d thought of this, thoroughly, before confessing. I continued to tell him that we wouldn’t need him any more, which in retrospect probably stung a bit more after what he chose to tell me.

We were a biotech startup, building tools for stem cells. I was the engineer and he wanted to join me to handle the business items. We worked at a law firm together at the time and I remember, quite vividly, walking over to his office to ask him to cold call research departments at universities to see who would be willing to help or would want our product. The exact phrase I heard out of him was “I don’t think that’s a good use of my time.” I remember thinking, “So it’s a good use of my time? I’m the one creating the technology, and what are you doing?” I’m also not a molecular biologist, so we had one of my friends, who was a PhD at the the University of California, Irvine as our head of science. She and I worked together for months to create the technology, and here comes this guy who is telling me he wasn’t willing to jump on the phone and make a few cold calls. I thought it was an insane comment and couldn’t believe it. But that’s also when I decided that this guy didn’t have the grit to get stuff done. More importantly, he had too big of an ego and there’s no room for that on any team that I’m helping build. It’d just get worse over time (as lawyers, we tended to see all those scenarios play out). He needed to be bought into the vision and the purpose of the technology, to discover cures and help people. If someone said all I had to do to make a difference in the world and help people’s lives was pick up a phone and cold call people, I’d do it in a heartbeat. In fact we did.

When he realized he was cut out of the team he’d ask me to grab coffee. I agreed and that’s when he confessed to his inadequacies. The truth is, he DID have the skills to make stuff happen. He just didn’t have the determination and willingness to do so. I was fully capable of handling all of the engineering while he used his perfectly capable hands to pick up a phone and dial numbers on a list, but he chose not to. He might read this piece and think it’s reflecting negatively on his character, but that’s not the intention. I actually respect him for saying what he said and you should to. When you realize that you’ve made a mistake or have certain inadequacies, I certainly hope you’re big enough to own up to it. That’s the mark of a good human, who is learning and growing. And, if I haven’t made it clear enough, nothing is beneath you when it comes to work. When your team is hustling, you ask them “How can I help?” That’s being a good human and a good teammate.