Notes and Takeaways from Managing Oneself
Source: Amazon
When I read it: February 2021
Why I read it: As knowledge workers become more responsible for the trajectory of their own careers, they are forced to learn how to manage themselves. In Managing Oneself, Peter Drucker provides a framework that any knowledge worker can use to learn how to manage him-or-herself. Here are my notes and takeaways.
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My notes
About Peter F. Drucker
Peter Drucker (1909 - 2005) was a management consultant and author widely regarded as the “founder of modern management”. He was born in Austria-Hungary and became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in the 1940s. He is credited with the following:
Source: Wikipedia
Coining the term “knowledge worker”
The idea that a company’s primary responsibility is to serve its customers and that profit is not the primary goal, but rather a necessary condition for a company’s sustainability.
Decentralized management
The simplification of business models (and management focus) through outsourcing ⇒ "Do what you do best and outsource the rest"
The prediction of the decline and marginalization of the blue-collar worker
Respect for the worker
Managing Oneself
As a knowledge worker, it’s now your responsibility to manage your own 50-plus-year career and keep yourself engaged and productive.
To manage your career well, you must cultivate a deep understanding of yourself ⇒ to do this, you must answer 5 questions:
What are my strengths?
How do I perform?
What are my values?
Where do I belong?
What should I contribute?
1. What are my strengths?
What are your most valuable strengths and most dangerous weaknesses?
Only when you operate from strengths can you achieve true excellence ⇒ A knowledge worker should not take on work in areas of weakness ⇒ It takes way more effort to improve from incompetence to mediocrity in an area of weakness than to improve from first-rate performance to excellence in an area of strength. (RKL: Isn’t it lazy/wrong to avoid improving on some weaknesses?)
Most people think they know what they are good and bad at ⇒ they are usually wrong.
The only way to discover your strengths and weaknesses is through feedback analysis:
Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen.
9-12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations.
The “feedback” is the difference between your anticipated outcome and what actually happens
Look for patterns in what you're seeing:
What results are you skilled at generating?
What abilities do you need to enhance in order to get the results you want?
What unproductive habits are preventing you from creating the outcomes you desire?
If you practice feedback analysis consistently for 2-3 years, it will:
Reveal your strengths and weaknesses
Highlight what you are doing or failing to do that deprives you of the full benefits of your strengths (e.g. where your intellectual arrogance is holding you back; good and bad habits; etc.)
Use the results from feedback analysis to:
Put yourself in situations in which your strengths can produce results
Work on improving your strengths
Work on acquiring the skills and knowledge you need to fully realize your strengths
Eliminate bad habits (i.e. the things you do or fail to do that inhibit your effectiveness and performance)
Decide what not to do
2. How do I perform?
How do you learn and work with others?
Different people work and perform differently ⇒ if you try to work in a way that is not your way, it will limit your performance. (Note: You might be able to modify the way you perform, but you’re unlikely to change it completely.)
Do not try to change yourself because you are unlikely to succeed ⇒ Instead, focus on improving the way you perform.
A few common personality traits usually determine how a person performs:
Are you a reader or a listener? Do you process information most effectively by reading it, or by hearing others discuss it?
Do you learn by writing, taking notes, doing, or talking?
Do you work well with people or are you a loner?
Do you produce results as a decision-maker or as an adviser?
(Note: The top spot requires a decision-maker and strong decision-makers often put somebody they trust into the number two spot as their adviser.)
Do you perform well under stress, or do you need a highly structured and predictable environment?
Do you work best in a big organization or a small one?
3. What are my values?
What are your most deeply held values?
Organizations, like people, have values ⇒ If your organization's values do not align with your own values, you will experience frustration and poor performance ⇒ To be effective in an organization, a person’s values must be compatible with the organization’s values (They do not need to be the same, but they must be close enough to coexist without conflict.)
This is not a question of ethics ⇒ Ethical rules are the same for everybody. (The ethical “mirror test” ⇒ Ethics require you to ask yourself: “What kind of person do I want to see in the mirror in the morning?”)
Avoid value conflicts ⇒ Situations in which value conflicts arise include differing views on:
The relationship between organizations and people, including:
The responsibility of an organization to its people and their development
The responsibility of an organization's people to their organization
The definition of winning, for example:
Constant, small improvements versus occasional, highly expensive, and risky “breakthroughs”
The primary function of a business and the responsibility of management, for example:
Short term results versus what’s best for the long term ⇒ “Every company has to produce short-term results. But in any conflict between short-term results and long-term growth, each company will determine its own priority.”
Your values should trump your strengths ⇒ There is sometimes a conflict between a person’s values and his or her strengths ⇒ When what you do well conflicts with your value system, your values should win. (RKL: This is when you should avoid your strengths...)
4. Where do I belong?
Based on your strengths, preferred work style, and values, in what kind of work environment can you make the greatest contribution?
At the very least you should be able to identify where you do not belong ⇒ this should allow you to say no to responsibilities, jobs, and opportunities that are not a fit.
Ideally, this framework will:
Help you know when to say yes to assignments
Enable you to set better expectations
(E.g. “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.”)
5. What should I contribute?
How can I make the greatest contribution to my organization's efforts?
To answer this question, you 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?
What results have to be achieved to make a difference?
When planning, it is rarely possible or fruitful to look too far ahead ⇒ A plan can usually cover no more than 18 months and still be reasonably clear and specific ⇒ Ask “where and how can I achieve results that will make a difference within the next year and a half?”
Results should be:
Hard to achieve, but reachable
Meaningful
Visible and measurable (if possible)
Managing others
To manage yourself, you also need to manage relationships with coworkers. This has 2 parts:
Accepting that other people are as much individuals as you ⇒ Each individual works in his or her own way, not your way. The key is to understand the people you work with and depend on so that you can make use of their strengths, their ways of working, and their values.
Taking responsibility for communication ⇒ Most personality conflicts arise from people not knowing what other people are working on, why they're working on it, and what result they expect. Make sure the people you’re working with understand what you are trying to do, why you are trying to do it, how you are going to do it, and what results you expect (and vice versa).
(E.g. “This is what I am good at. This is how I work. These are my values. This is the contribution I plan to concentrate on and these are the results you can expect me to deliver… And what do I need to know about your strengths, how you perform, your values, and your proposed contribution?”)
Trust and Manners
Organizations are no longer built on force; they’re built on trust.
Trust between people does not mean that they like one another; it means they understand one another.
“Manners are the lubricating oil of an organization” ⇒ they reduce friction between people ⇒ simple things like saying “please” and “thank you” and knowing a person’s name or asking about her family enable two people to work together whether they like each other or not.
A lack of manners = a lack of courtesy.
Midlife crisis and second careers
Midlife crises are mostly the result of boredom.
Today most work is knowledge work, which means workers can work long into old age ⇒ this naturally leads to boredom (resulting from a lack of challenge).
At some point, when you reach the peak of your current career, you will be very good at your job, but you may no longer be learning or deriving challenge and satisfaction from the job ⇒ this may lead you to a second career.
There are three ways to develop a second career:
Start one ⇒ move to a different organization or line of work
Develop a parallel career ⇒ go part-time or shift to consulting and work on something with a purpose you’re passionate about in parallel (e.g. church, nonprofit, startup)
Become a social entrepreneur ⇒ start a nonprofit or company focused on a purpose you care about.
Other notes
Ideas don’t move mountains; bulldozers do ⇒ but ideas show the bulldozer where to go.
The secret of “managing” the boss = understanding his or her answers to the 5 questions in this framework.