Managing Oneself: A Strategic Plan for Executive Careers

by By Peter F. Drucker

We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity; if you have ambition and smarts, you can rise to the
top of your chosen profession. To do so, you’ll need to cultivate a deep understanding of yourself; your
strengths and weaknesses, how you work with others, what your values are, and where you can make the
greatest contribution. Only when you operate from strengths can you achieve true excellence. History’s
great achievers, like Napoleon, da Vinci, and Mozart, have always managed themselves. Here are the
steps for planning your career to the highest level:

1. Discover your Strengths: You need to know your strengths to know where you belong. The only
way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis. This practice was originally invented by a
German theologian and picked up by Saint Ignatius of Loyola in the 1500’s, who incorporated it into
the Jesuit Order to focus on performance and results. The Jesuit order, then came to dominate much of
Europe within 30 years of its founding. Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write
down what you expect will happen. Nine or twelve months later, compare the actual results with your
expectations. Practiced consistently, this simple method will show you 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 where you are not particularly
competent. Finally, it will show you where you have no strengths and cannot perform.

Several implications for action follow from feedback analysis: First, concentrate on your strengths and
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 to fill the gaps in your
knowledge. Third, discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance. Far too
many people with great expertise in one area, are contemptuous of knowledge in other areas. Often they
believe being bright is a substitute for knowledge. First-rate engineers, for instance, tend to take pride in
not knowing anything about people and human resources professionals, by contrast, often pride
themselves on their ignorance of accounting and quantitative methods. Acquire the skills and knowledge
you need to realize your strengths fully.

2. Identify and Remedy your Bad Habits: The things you habitually do or fail to do that inhibit your
effectiveness should be identified and fixed. Such habits will quickly show up in the feedback. For
example, a planner may find that his plans fail because he does not follow through on them; like so
many brilliant people, he believes that good ideas move mountains. However, the 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. At the same time, feedback
will also reveal when the problem is a lack of manners. 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.
Simple things like saying “please” and “thank you” and knowing a person’s name or asking about his
family, enable two people to work together whether they like each other or not. Bright people often do
not understand this. If analysis shows that someone’s brilliant work fails repeatedly as soon as
cooperation from others is required, it probably indicates a lack of courtesy. Finally, one should waste
as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. It takes far less energy to move from
competence to excellence than it takes to improve from incompetence to mediocrity.

3. Are you a Reader or a Listener? Just as people achieve results by doing what they are good at, they
also achieve results working in ways they perform best. The first thing to know is whether you are a
reader or a listener. When Dwight Eisenhower was Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in
Europe, his press conferences were famous for their effectiveness; but when he became president his
press conferences were a total failure. In Europe, his aides made sure every question from the press was
presented in writing; then Eisenhower was in total command. But when he became president, he
succeeded two listeners, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Eisenhower may have felt that he
had to do what his two predecessors had done. As a result, he never even heard the questions journalists
asked and looked completely unprepared. A few years later, Lyndon Johnson destroyed his presidency,
in large measure, by not knowing that he was a listener. His predecessor, John Kennedy, was a reader
who had assembled a brilliant group of writers as his assistants, making sure that they wrote him before
discussing their memos in person. Johnson kept those people on his staff and they kept on writing. He
apparently never understood one word of what they wrote. You must discover if you learn and
communicate better by reading and writing or by listening and speaking.

4. Discover how you Perform: You also have to know if you work better with people or alone. If you
work well with people, do you work better as a subordinate or a superior? Some people are great
soldiers but poor generals. Conversely, Winston Churchill was a terrible government employee but was
a great Prime Minister. Also, some people are talented coaches, mentors, and advisors but terrible at
execution. Others are better at decision making and execution but bad teachers. Many people perform
well as advisers but cannot take the burden and pressure of making the decision. This is a reason the
number two person in an organization often fails when promoted to the number one position. The top
spot requires a decision maker. Strong decision makers often put somebody they trust into the number
two spot as their adviser, and in that position the person is outstanding. However, in the number one
spot, the same person fails. He knows what the decision should be but cannot accept the responsibility
for actually making it. Other important questions to ask include; do you perform well under stress or do
you need a highly predictable environment? Do you work best in a big organization or a small one? Few
people work well in all kinds of environments. People who are very successful in large organizations
often flounder miserably when moved into smaller ones. Therefore, know the type of work conditions
you most value in terms of autonomy, rank, position, size, and environment.

5. Manage your Boss and Coworkers: Managing yourself requires taking responsibility for
relationships. This has two parts: The first is to accept the fact that other people are as much individuals
as you yourself are. This means that they too have their strengths, they too have their ways of getting
things done, and they too have their values. To be effective, you have to know the strengths, the
performance modes, and the values of your coworkers. Typical is the person who was trained to write
reports in his first assignment because that boss was a reader. Even if the next boss is a listener, the
person goes on writing reports that produce no results. Invariably the boss will think the employee is
incompetent or lazy and he will fail. However, that could have been avoided if the employee only
looked at the new boss and analyzed how this boss performs. This is the secret of “managing” the boss.
The same holds true for all your coworkers. Each works his way, not your way. The second part is
taking responsibility for communication. You should communicate with your boss and coworkers in the
most effective way given your knowledge of how they perform. Write emails and reports to the readers
and speak on the phone or in person to the listeners. Knowledge of self and others through feedback
and analysis will allow you to manage your career to the highest level.

Peter F. Drucker was a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and wrote several essays on leadership, career
advancement, and performance.
Managing Oneself: A Strategic Plan for Executive Careers

1. Homework: Ask a trusted coworker or boss to identify your top three strengths.

2. What do you believe are your top 1 or 2 weaknesses?

3. Are you a reader or a listener?

4. Do you work better as a team member or alone? boss or subordinate? Advisor

5. Do you prefer a large or small company? Predictable or varied environment?

6. Are your boss and coworkers readers or listeners?