I have been working with a client recently that frequently uses the question - “what is our right to win?” For example, when assessing strategic growth opportunities for their business, they evaluate standard drivers such as market size, growth rates, competition, and margin trends, and then thoughtfully, and with a refreshing level of self awareness for a major multinational company, turn the mirror on themselves to ask “regardless of how attractive this opportunity is, why should we able to win here?”

As I sit reflecting on my own professional decisions, I realize how important this question should be to assessing one’s career choices.  Like many of my peers, I am plagued by a constant fear of choosing.  In the past twelve years, I’ve been a management consultant, run business development for a software company serving non-profits/advocacy groups, spent a stint writing on technology commercialization at a major research institute, went back to graduate school, founded a web-based service in the advertising/entertainment space, and now help to run a venture-backed research firm on cleantech.  On top of all of that, I harbor a deep desire to be a yoga instructor and own a coffee shop.

To say that I have become a jack of all trades, might be an understatement.  I don’t regret any of the aforementioned opportunities that I have pursued, yet in retrospect it is clear to me that most of the analysis that led me down those paths was focused on dissecting the job and not me.  Is this a big market opportunity? Would this be an interesting topic to learn? Is there a brand value to the firm/position?  I even asked altruistic questions… What does this job/company contribute to the world? Is this work meaningful?  

What I didn’t genuinely ask was “why am I uniquely positioned to succeed in this role?”  Certainly, I could have answered that question with a proper amount of spin in each job interview, but what I didn’t do was really take stock of it myself.  I think that I am just beginning to internalize how important this question is to aligning one’s passions and skills to one’s chosen profession. As I think about the roles that I will take over the next decade, I am more certain than ever that success, and equally as important, satisfaction, will rest in making sure that I take a good look in the mirror each and every time and have a solid, gut-check answer to the question of “Why me? What is my personal right to win here?”