Drucker - Managing Oneself

Harvard Business Review

CLASSICS

MANAGING
ONESELF

Peter F. Drucker

Harvard Business Press
Boston, Massachusetts

Copyright 2008 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

Originally published in Harvard Business Review in March 1999

and January 2005

Reprint # R0501K

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

12 11 10 09 08 5 4 3 2 1

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to , or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Drucker, Peter F. (Peter Ferdinand), 19092005.

Managing oneself / Peter F. Drucker.

p. cm. (Harvard Business review classics)

Reprint of an article from the Harvard business review. Reprinted
earlier in 1999 as Reprint 99204.

ISBN 978-1-4221-2312-6

1. Career development. 2. Career changes. 3. Self-management
(Psychology) 4. Self-actualization (Psychology) 5. Success
Psychological aspects. I. Harvard business review. II. Title.

HF5381.D677 2008

650.1dc22

2007037486

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.481992.

Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practicemany of which still speak to and influence us today. The HBR Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each volume contains a groundbreaking idea that has shaped best practices and inspired countless managers around the worldand will change how you think about the business world today.

Historys great achieversa Napolon, a da Vinci, a Mozarthave always managed themselves. That, in large measure, is what makes them great achievers. But they are rare exceptions, so unusual both in their talents and their accomplishments as to be considered outside the boundaries of ordinary human existence. Now, most of us, even those of us with modest endowments, will have to learn to manage ourselves. We will have to learn to develop ourselves. We will have to place ourselves where we can make the greatest contribution. And we will have to stay mentally alert and engaged during a 50-year working life, which means knowing how and when to change the work we do.

Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong. More often, people know what they are not good atand even then more people are wrong than right. And yet, a person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weaknesses, let alone on something one cannot do at all.

Throughout history, people had little need to know their strengths. A person was born into a position and a line of work: The peasants son would also be a peasant; the artisans daughter, an artisans wife; and so on. But now people have choices. We need to know our strengths in order to know where we belong.

The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis. Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen. Nine or 12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations. I have been practicing this method for 15 to 20 years now, and every time I do it, I am surprised. The feedback analysis showed me, for instanceand to my great surprisethat I have an intuitive understanding of technical people, whether they are engineers or accountants or market researchers. It also showed me that I dont really resonate with generalists.

Feedback analysis is by no means new. It was invented sometime in the fourteenth century by an otherwise totally obscure German theologian and picked up quite independently, some 150 years later, by John Calvin and Ignatius of Loyola, each of whom incorporated it into the practice of his followers. In fact, the steadfast focus on performance and results that this habit produces explains why the institutions these two men founded, the Calvinist church and the Jesuit order, came to dominate Europe within 30 years.

Practiced consistently, this simple method will show you within a fairly short period of time, maybe two or three years, where your strengths lieand this is the most important thing to know. The method will show you what you are doing or failing to do that deprives you of the full benefits of your strengths. It will show you where you are not particularly competent. And finally, it will show you where you have no strengths and cannot perform.

Several implications for action follow from feedback analysis. First and foremost, concentrate on your strengths. Put yourself where your strengths can produce results.

Second, work on improving your strengths. Analysis will rapidly show where you need to improve skills or acquire new ones. It will also show the gaps in your knowledgeand those can usually be filled. Mathematicians are born, but everyone can learn trigonometry.

Third, discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it. Far too many peopleespecially people with great expertise in one areaare contemptuous of knowledge in other areas or believe that being bright is a substitute for knowledge. First-rate engineers, for instance, tend to take pride in not knowing anything about people. Human beings, they believe, are much too disorderly for the good engineering mind. Human resources professionals, by contrast, often pride themselves on their ignorance of elementary accounting or of quantitative methods altogether. But taking pride in such ignorance is self-defeating. Go to work on acquiring the skills and knowledge you need to fully realize your strengths.

It is equally essential to remedy your bad habitsthe things you do or fail to do that inhibit your effectiveness and performance. Such habits will quickly show up in the feedback. For example, a planner may find that his beautiful plans fail because he does not follow through on them. Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work. This planner will have to learn that the work does not stop when the plan is completed. He must find people to carry out the plan and explain it to them. He must adapt and change it as he puts it into action. And finally, he must decide when to stop pushing the plan.

At the same time, feedback will also reveal when the problem is a lack of manners. Manners are the lubricating oil of an organization. It is a law of nature that two moving bodies in contact with each other create friction. This is as true for human beings as it is for inanimate objects. Mannerssimple things like saying please and thank you and knowing a persons name or asking after her familyenable two people to work together whether they like each other or not. Bright people, especially bright young people, often do not understand this. If analysis shows that someones brilliant work fails again and again as soon as cooperation from others is required, it probably indicates a lack of courtesythat is, a lack of manners.

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. In those areas a personand especially a knowledge workershould not take on work, jobs, and assignments. 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 first-rate performance to excellence. And yet most peopleespecially most teachers and most organizationsconcentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and time should go instead to making a competent person into a star performer.