Managing Oneself
by Peter R Drucker ,
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW,
JAN 2005 [abridged]
Most of us will have to
learn to manage ourselves and develop ourselves. We will have to place ourselves
where we can make the greatest contribution staying mentally alert and engaged
during a 50-year working life, which means knowing how and when to change the
work we do.
What Are My Strengths?
Most people think they know what they are good at. They
are usually wrong. More often, people know
what they are not good at – though more are wrong than right. Yet, a person can
perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weaknesses, let
alone on something one cannot do at all.
Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action,
write down what you expect will happen. 9 or 12 months later, compare the
actual results with your expectations. I have been practicing this method for 15 - 20 years now, and
every time I’m surprised.
Practiced consistently, this will show you within 2 - 3
years, where your strengths lie - and this is the most important thing to
know. It will show you what
you are doing or failing to do that deprives you of the full benefits of your
strengths, where you are not particularly competent, and where you have no
strengths or ability to perform.
#1: Most importantly, concentrate
on your strengths. Put yourself where your strengths can produce results.
#2: Improve your strengths. Analysis will rapidly show where
you need to improve skills or acquire new ones. It will also show gaps in your
knowledge.
#3: Discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing
disabling ignorance and overcome it. Far too many people - especially
people with great expertise in one area - are contemptuous of knowledge in
other areas or believe that being bright is a substitute for knowledge. Go to work on acquiring the skills and
knowledge you need to fully realize your strengths.
Your bad habits - what
you do or fail to do that inhibits your effectiveness and performance - will
quickly show up in the feedback - problems like a lack of manners. Manners are
the lubricating oil of an organization – simply saying "please" and
"thank you", knowing people’s names, or keeping up with family news -
enables two people to work together whether they like each other or not. Bright
people, especially bright young people, often do not understand this.
Comparing your
expectations with your results also indicates what not to do. We all have a
vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of
becoming even mediocre.
One should waste as little effort as possible on
improving areas of low competence.
It takes far more energy
and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve
from 1st-rate performance to excellence.
Yet most people, teachers,
and organizations concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre
ones. Energy, resources,
and time should go instead to making a competent person into a star performer.
How Do I Perform?
Like one's strengths, how
one performs is unique. A few common personality traits usually determine how a
person performs:
Am I a reader or a listener? The first thing to know is whether you are a
reader or a listener.
How do I learn? Many 1st-class
writers do poorly in school because they don’t learn by listening and reading.
They learn by writing. Some people learn by doing; others by hearing themselves
talk.
Of all the important
pieces of self-knowledge, understanding how you learn is the easiest to
acquire.
Do I work well with people or am I a loner? And if you do work well with people, you then
must ask in what relationship? Some people work best as subordinates; some as
team members; some as coaches and mentors.
Others work best alone.
Do I produce results as a decision maker or as
an adviser? The number two person in an organization often
fails when promoted to number one. Many
people perform best as advisers but cannot take the burden and pressure of decision
making. Others need an adviser to force
them to think before they can make decisions and act on them with speed, self-confidence,
and courage.
Other important questions to ask include:
Do I perform well under
stress, or do I need a highly structured and predictable environment?
Do I work best in a big or
small organization?
The conclusion bears repeating: Do not try to change
yourself - you are unlikely to succeed. Work hard to improve the way you
perform. Try not to take on work you will only perform poorly.
What Are My Values?
With respect to ethics,
the rules are the same for everybody, and the test is a simple one.
I call it the
"mirror test." What kind of
person do I want to see in the mirror?
But ethics is only part
of a value system - especially of an organization's value system.
To work in an
organization whose value system is unacceptable or incompatible with one's own
condemns a person to frustration and non-performance. They do not need to be
the same, but they must be close enough to coexist.
A person's strengths and
the way that person performs rarely conflict; the two are complementary. But
there is sometimes a conflict between a person's values and his or her
strengths.
Values are and should be the ultimate test.
Where Do I Belong?
Most people, especially
highly gifted people, do not really know where they belong until they are well
past their mid-20s. By that time, however, they should know the answers to the
three questions: What are my strengths?
How do I perform? and What are my
values?
Then they can and should
decide where they do and do not belong.
Knowing the answer to
these questions enables a person to say, "Yes, I will do that. But this is
the way I should be doing it. This is the way it should be structured. This is
the way the relationships should be. These are the kind of results you should
expect from me, and in this time frame, because this is who I am."
Successful careers are not planned. They develop when
people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their
method of work, and their values.
Knowing where one
belongs can transform a hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre person
into an outstanding performer.
What Should I
Contribute?
Throughout history, the
great majority of people never had to ask the question: “What should I contribute?” And
until very recently, it was taken for granted that most people were subordinates
who did as they were told.
Then in the late 1960s,
no one wanted to be told what to do any longer. Young men and women began to
ask. What do I want to do? And what
they heard was that the way to contribute was to "do your own thing." But
this solution was wrong. Very few of the people who believed that doing one's own thing would
lead to contribution, self-fulfilment, and success achieved any of the three.
But still, there is no
return to the old answer of doing what you are told or assigned to do. Knowledge
workers in particular have to learn to ask a question that has not been asked
before: What should my contribution
be? To answer it, they must address three distinct elements: What does the situation require? Given my
strengths, my way of performing, and my values, how can I make the greatest contribution
to what needs to be done? And finally, What
results have to be achieved to make a difference?
It is rarely possible - or
even particularly fruitful - to look too far ahead. A plan can usually cover no more than 18 months
and still be reasonably clear and specific. So the question in most
cases should be: Where and how can I
achieve results that will make a difference within the next year and a half?
The answer must balance several things.
#1 - the results should
be hard to achieve - requiring “a stretch" – but within reach.
#2 - the results should
be meaningful, making a difference.
#3 – the results should be
visible and, if at all possible, measurable. From this will come a course of
action: what to do, where and how to start,
and what goals and deadlines to set.
Responsibility for
Relationships
Very few people work by effectively
by themselves. Therefore managing
yourself requires taking responsibility for relationships. Here’s how:
#1: accept
others as individual human
beings with their own strengths, performance modes, values different
from yours. Understand the people you
work with and depend on! Working
relationships are as much based on the people as they are on the work.
#2: take
responsibility for communication.
Personality conflicts mostly arise from the fact that people do not know what
other people are doing. They do not know
because they have not asked and therefore have not been told. People fail to
ask because they are afraid of being thought presumptuous, nosey, or stupid. But they’re wrong. These questions are most
helpful and essential.
Organizations are built on
trust. Trust requires that people understand one another. Taking responsibility
for relationships is therefore an absolute necessity and duty.
The Second Half of Your
Life
We hear a great deal of
talk about the midlife
crisis of the executive. It is mostly boredom. At 45, they are very good
at their jobs but are not learning, contributing or deriving challenge and satisfaction
from the job, but are still facing another 20 - 25 years of work. That is why
managing oneself increasingly leads to a 2nd career.
They have substantial
skills, know how to work, need a community and maybe income. But above all, they need
challenge. So some change organizations; others careers; still
others keep working but develop full or part-time parallel careers or non-profit
ventures.
But you must start early. If
one does not begin to volunteer before ~ 40, one will not volunteer >
60. 2nd careers also provide a
community during times of crisis. Finding a second area offers an
opportunity for being a leader, being respected, and being a success.
Because individual workers
are highly mobile and outlive organizations, they must manage themselves by
thinking and behaving as their own CEOs.
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