Managing oneself

Managing Oneself
by Peter R Drucker1
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW, JANUARY 2005, pág 100-109
History's great achievers - a Napoleon, a da Vinci, a Mozart - have 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 humanexistence. 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.

What Are My Strengths?
Mostpeople think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong. More often, people know what they are not good at - and 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 intoa position and a line of work: The peasant's son would also be a peasant; the artisan's daughter, an artisan's 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 12months 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 instance-and to my great surprise-that I have an intuitive understanding of technical people, whether they are engineers or accountants or market researchers. It also showed me that I don't reallyresonate 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.

Peter F. Drucker is the Marie Rankin Clarke Professor of Social Scienceand Management (Emeritus) at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. This article is an excerpt from his book Management Challenges for the 21st Century (HarperCollins, 1999)-

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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 Europewithin 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 lie - and 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. Andfinally, 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 yourknowledge -and 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 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. First-rate engineers,...