What's Your Biggest Weakness? Kanban as a Cognitive Immune System

Right now I’m looking for my next career opportunity, so that means a lot of conversations and interviews. All job seekers dread that one inevitable question for which there’s no good answer. It’s legitimate and relevant, and unavoidable. You’d better have a good response prepared because you’ll look foolish—or worse—if you stumble. Only the Sphinx herself posed a query more diabolical, and with greater consequences for muffing the answer. It’s only four words long, and it strikes fear into every applicant’s heart:

What’s your biggest weakness?

This question baffled and terrified me as much as anyone else—until now, that is. Kanban gave me an unexpected route to answer this question once and for all, without waffling or dodging. 

Before I tell you about that, let's look at what doesn't work so well. 

The two common strategies you've heard about didn't satisfy me. They’re probably good enough for you to squeak past the question during an interview, but neither will build your case in the eyes of a hiring manager. Let’s dissect both of them and diagnose their ills:

Strategy #1: Describe a weakness that’s not particularly relevant to the job.

This is a cop-out, plain and simple—It’s a denial of any relevant weakness, which is just silly. A tough interviewer will see right through this and press you to name a relevant weakness anyway. After some fidgeting on your part, whatever you come up with is an opportunity for your interviewer to pounce, taking the conversation in a bad direction. Your diminished influence over the flow of the interview will put you one step closer to losing your confidence—and a job offer. 

On the other hand, imagine your minor ruse actually worked as intended: The interviewer glossed over your non-response and moved on to the next question—But what are they thinking? You can’t be sure it didn’t count against you. At the very least, you didn’t impress them with your answer. Yes, you dodged the bullet, but lost an opportunity to take the conversation in a favorable direction. And don't forget you also burned up a couple minutes of valuable time in the bargain.

That’s why some people go with the other popular option:

Strategy #2: Describe a minor job-related weakness that you recently fixed

If you have a good story to tell, it’s better than the first option. You’ve demonstrated an ability to fix a single performance-related problem—but only one. As long as it was minor but meaningful, you deserve some credit. But now suppose your interviewer follows up by asking you how you became aware of the problem. Did you spot it yourself while it was small, or did it grow to affect co-workers? Worse still, did you learn about the problem from your supervisor? In that case, was it during an annual performance review—which is way too late to fix it in time? If you didn’t spot the problem yourself right away—and fix it—you’ve tacitly admitted a second weakness: lack of self-awareness. That’s another opportunity for the interviewer to pounce, and again the conversation takes a wrong turn.

The wider picture

Regardless of which strategy you choose, there’s a bigger problem. In either case, you’re allowing the conversation to proceed within an unfriendly framework. At its core, it assumes that: 1) You have weaknesses; 2) Weaknesses are always bad; 3) You must be prompted to admit your weaknesses; 4) Therefore you're not such a stellar worker after all. That's hardly the message you want to send a potential employer! You can’t help but be in a “damage control” mode, forced to portray yourself as a fragile teacup just waiting to crack or shatter under the least stress. Under these conditions, the best you’ll ever manage is to have some super glue handy for when the inevitable happens. 

Both strategies burn up valuable time while doing little or nothing to advance your case, and both leave you vulnerable to uncomfortable follow-up questions. Must we confine ourselves to choosing the lesser of these two evils? It would seem that the only other choice is a counterattack: Just imagine how well it would turn out if you demanded your interviewer admit their weaknesses too! Not smart. 

Instead, you want a response that will reframe the question and allow you to drive the conversation along a more favorable avenue. Furthermore, your response should show that you don't have to rely on a mixture of luck and paranoia to head off problems before they become full-blown disasters. 

To help shed some light on this problem with our minds, let’s shift gears for a moment to talk about our bodies.

Systems for a healthy body & a healthy mind

Did you know that one of your immune system’s jobs is to keep cancer in check? The emerging field of immuno-oncology has been the focus of my own research for the last couple years. Like it or not, most of us have cancerous cells lurking somewhere in our bodies. That’s normal—the body can’t completely prevent cancer from forming, but it does a great job keeping it suppressed. In fact, full-blown cancer can be viewed partly as a failure of the immune system to nip small, inevitable problems in the bud. And unlike traditional chemotherapy, many modern treatments for cancer rally the immune system to get back on the job, eradicating tumors while leaving the rest of the body untouched.

The immune system looks for leading indicators of trouble by sending white blood cells around to “interrogate” the other cells, looking for bad omens. It can’t peer inside the cell, so it looks for indicators of trouble that are visible from the outside. Normal, healthy cells display certain proteins on their surface indicate everything is running smoothly. When those indicators disappear or don’t look right, it’s a sign that something inside is badly amiss. The ailing cell is tagged for destruction, but not before the immune system extracts as much information as possible to help find other sickly cells with the same problem.

Of course our immune system protects only your body—What about your mind? A healthy body without a healthy mind isn’t much good: The world’s healthiest dunce may be tumor-free but is condemned to one screw-up after another. None of us are that dunder-headed, but luck and paranoia won't cut it. What if we had something that does for our minds what the immune system does for our bodies? I suggest to you that Personal Kanban is just such a thing. It’s a cognitive immune system. Like your body’s immune system, your kanban board will give you leading indicators of trouble. Not only will you spot problems while they’re small and manageable, kanban gives you an opportunity to take advantage of inevitable stumbles to help you adapt and become stronger. It’s a system that evolves to meet life’s ongoing challenges and changes. The two simple rules of Personal Kanban (visualize your work and limit work-in-process) are all you need to get started. But you’ll gain more superpowers when you periodically reflect on completed work. You’ll become as incisive as Professor X while healing damage as fast as the Wolverine! Because you spotted them in time, you’ll be getting smarter because you made mistakes. No longer do you fear failure—you’ve become resilient, even antifragile.

A better answer

Now, back to your job interview and the stomach-churning “What’s your greatest weakness?” question. If you’re using Personal Kanban—your cognitive immune system—now’s your chance to take full advantage of the situation.  Don’t opt for a sheepish response! Take the bull by the horns—Describe how your own board helped you quickly spot mistakes, fix them, and learn from them. Get bonus points for explaining how you overcame your fear of embarrassment to share your insights with others. In short, you can turn everyone’s most feared question about weaknesses into an exciting opportunity to highlight your strengths.

Echinacea, green tea, and chicken soup boost your body’s immune system. Whiteboards, markers, and sticky notes do the same for your cognitive immune system. Whether you’re in the job market or not, it makes good sense to start building your own Personal Kanban board before the next problem gets out of hand.