For a long time, one of the most dangerous questions a client could ask me was very simple:
“Can you?”
The problem was not that I couldn’t.
The problem was that I could usually do something about it.
Can you help us with this contract issue?
Yes.
Can you look at the financing?
Yes.
Can you set up a system?
Yes.
Can you build us a website?
Yes.
Can you build premises for us? Yes Can you set up a fish processing plant for us? Yes
I have always enjoyed solving problems. I have worked in many different areas and learned a fair amount along the way. That made it easy to confuse two very different things.
What I know how to do.
And what I intend to sell.
It took me a surprisingly long time to understand this.
The man who could fix everything
Perhaps there is something rather Icelandic about this.
In the old days in the countryside, the farmer, mechanic, carpenter, electrician and others often had to be the same person.
Not because it was the best way to do things.
But because there was nobody else.
If a machine broke down, it had to be fixed. If something broke, a replacement had to be made. If the electric pump stopped working, someone had to figure out why.
It did not always have to be perfect.
It had to work.
This produced remarkably capable people.
People who knew how to manage.
And it is still a quality we admire.
But sometimes a solution outlives the problem that created it.
The small market
I think many independent specialists in Iceland still carry this way of thinking somewhere in their minds.
The market is so small that you cannot afford to narrow your focus too much.
If I say I only do this, what happens to everything else?
What if nobody needs exactly this?
So it seems safer to offer a little of everything.
I believed this for a long time.
Then something rather strange happened when I began to narrow my own focus.
The market did not get smaller.
It got bigger.
Not because more companies suddenly appeared.
But because I began to see more.
A narrower focus brings more detail into view
If you work with a hundred very different businesses, you see many problems.
But if you work repeatedly with similar kinds of businesses, you begin to see patterns.
You see where money is leaking out.
You see why invoices go out too late.
You see how time tracking, wages, machine use and projects fit together.
You see how a small discrepancy that seems harmless once adds up to millions when it repeats throughout the year.
You also begin to recognise the questions before they are asked.
That was when I realised I had understood something backwards.
Narrowing your market does not have to reduce your opportunities. It can increase the number of problems you are able to see.
Breadth gives you more places to look.
Depth gives you more to find.
“But you know how to do this”
None of this changes what you know how to do.
A client can still say to me:
“Didn’t you use to do this?”
Yes.
“Don’t you know how to build something like this?”
Yes.
“Then can’t you just do it for us?”
And this is where the difficult part comes in.
Saying:
“Yes. I know how to do this. But I am not the right person for it today.”
That is strangely difficult for someone who has long been proud of being able to sort things out.
But there is a big difference between denying your skills and deciding what you intend to do with them.
I am not trying to know less.
I am choosing more carefully what I sell.
What if the businesses are not the problem?
There is a lot of discussion about the gig economy and whether Icelandic businesses are ready to buy more specialist expertise as needed rather than hiring everyone full-time.
But perhaps another question is just as interesting.
What if the specialists themselves are partly holding this development back?
A business may not need a full-time CFO.
It may need 20 per cent of a very good CFO.
It does not necessarily need an HR manager all week.
It needs the right person when particular problems arise.
The same can apply to operations, marketing, technology and countless other fields.
But this only works if the specialist is willing to say clearly:
This is what I do.
Not this and everything else I could possibly do.
What used to be a strength
The old countryman had to be able to fix everything.
That was his strength.
But he also lived in a world where the specialist was far away.
That world is disappearing.
Today, all the expertise does not have to reside in the same employee.
And perhaps it does not all have to reside in the same independent specialist either.
That does not mean we should stop being curious, learning new things or knowing how to manage.
Quite the opposite.
Broad experience may be what makes someone unusually good in a narrow field.
But not everything you know how to do has to be for sale.
I think it took me far too long to learn this sentence:
I am not going to sell everything I know how to do.