Find Your Hedgehog & You’ll Find Your Purpose
By Maria Gronlund
There’s a good chance that you’re good at what you do, and hopefully you’re being paid well for it. But are you passionate about what you do or is it just a paycheck?
In a post titled “Personal Hedgehog 2.0: Discover What You’re Meant To Do,” Tony Khuonh of Agile Lifestyle argues that finding your “Personal Hedgehog” is the key to unlocking your potential and discovering what you’re really meant to do:
Because we’re often unclear on what type of work makes us happy, we get stuck in analysis paralysis whenever we think about making a change. It’s difficult to know where to start if you don’t know what you should be doing. What kind of work would you simultaneously be good at, make you fulfilled, and keep a roof over your head? The answer to that important question can be found when you find your Personal Hedgehog.
The Personal Hedgehog concept was coined by author Jim Collins. In his book Good to Great, he uses the parable of a cunning fox and a simple hedgehog. The fox keeps trying new ways to eat the hedgehog, but the hedgehog wears him out by doing his one trick: rolling into a thorny ball. In this way your Personal Hedgehog is about focusing on finding the one, main thing that you do well.
The Personal Hedgehog can point you to what you’re really meant to be doing. The concept flows from understanding where you intersect within the following three circles.
What you can be the best in the world at (and, equally important, what you cannot be the best in the world at). This discerning standard goes far beyond core competence. Just because you possess a core competence doesn’t necessarily mean you can be the best in the world at it. Conversely, what you can be the best at might not even be something in which you are currently engaged.
What drives your economic engine.All the good-to-great companies attained piercing insight into how to most effectively generate sustained and robust cash flow and profitability. In particular, they discovered the single denominator—profit per x—that had the greatest impact on their economics. (It would be cash flow per x in the social sector.)
What you are deeply passionate about. The good-to-great companies focused on those activities that ignited their passion. The idea here is not to stimulate passion but to discover what makes you passionate.
“Finding your Hedgehog isn’t easy,” says Khuonh. “It requires asking tough questions about what you’re good at, what value you bring to others, and what you want to spend the rest of your life doing.”
