Harvard Business Review www.hbr.

org

BEST OF HBR 1999

Success in the knowledge

economy comes to those who
know themselves-their
strengths, their values, and
Managing Oneself
how they best perform. by Peter F Drucker

Included with this full -text Harvard Business Review article:

1 ArticleSummary
The ldea in Brief-the core idea
The ldea in Practiceputting the idea to work

2 Managing Oneself
12 Further Reading
Alist of related materials, with annotations to guide further
exploration of the article's ideas and applications

Reprint RO501 K

The ldea in Brief
unprecedented oppor
We lve ln an age of
drive, and
tunity If you ve got ambition, your cho
smarts, you can ise to the top of
profession-egardless of where you
sen
comes re
started out. But with opportunity
sponsibility. Companies today aren't man
aging their knowledge workers'careers.
chief ex
Rather, we must each be our own
ecutive officer
Simply put, it's up to you tO carve out your
place in the work World and know when to
change course. And it's up tO you to keep
yourself engaged and productive during a
work life that may span some 50 yearS.
To do all of these things well, youll need to
cultivate a deep understanding of yourself.
What are your most valuable strengths and
most darngerous weaknesses? Equally im
portant, how do you learn and work with
others? What are your most deeply held val
ues? And in what type of work environment
can you make the greatest contribution?
The implication is clear: Only when you op
erate from a combination of your strengths
and self-knowledge can you achieve trUe
and lasting-excellence.
Managing Oneself
The ldea in Practice
yourself these questions:
To build a life of excellence. begin by asking
"What are my values?"
"What are my strengths?"
What are your ethics? What do you see as your
To accurately identify your strengths, use most imnportant responsibilities for Iiving a
feedback analysis. Every time you make a key
worthy, ethical life? Do your organization's
decision, write down the outcome you eX
ethics resonate with your own values? If not.
pect. Several months later, compare the actual
your career will likely be marked by frustration
results with your expected results. Look for
and poor performance
patterns in what youte seeing: What results
are you skilled at generating?What abilities do "Where do I belong?"
you need to enhance in order to get the re
Consider your strengths, preferred work style
sults you want? What unproductive habits are
and values. Based on these qualities, in what
preventing you from creating the outcomes
kind of work environment would you fit in
you desire? In identifying opportunities for im
provement, don't waste time cultivating skill best? Find the perfect fit, and youll transforn
yourself from a merely acceptable employee
areas where you have little competence. In into a star performer.
stead, concentrate on--and build onyour
strengths. "What can Icontribute?"
In earlier eras, companies told businesspeop
"How do I work?"
In what ways do you work best? Do you pro what their contribution should be Today. yom
cess information most effectively by reading have choices. To decide how you can best e
it, or by hearing others discUSs it? Do you hance your organlzation's performance, first
ask what the situation requires. Based on yo
accomplish the most by working with other
strengths, work style, and values, how migh
people, or by working alone? Do you per
form best while making decislons, or while you make the greatest contribution to your
advising others on key matters? Are you in organization's efforts?
top form when things get stressful, or do
you function optimally in a highly predict
able environment?
 Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know
themselves--their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.
BEST OF HBR 1999
Managing Oneself
by Peter F Drucker
We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity:
Ifyou've got ambition and smarts, you can rise to
the top of your chosen profession, regardless of
where you started out.
But with opportunity comes responsibility.
Companies today aren't managing their employ
ees' careers; knowledge workers must, effec
tively, be their own chiefexecutive officers. It's up
to you to carve out your place, to know when to
change course, and to keep yourselfengaged and
productive during a work life that may span
some so years. To do those things well, you'I
need to cultivate a deep understanding of your
self-not only what your strengths and weak
nesses are but also how you learn, how you work
with others, what your values are, and where you
can make the greatest contribution. Because only
when you operate from strengths can you
achieve true excellence.
History's great achievers-a Napoléon, a da
Vinci, a Mozart-have always managed them
selves. That, in large measure, is what makes
them great achievers. But they are rare excep
tions, so unusual both in their talents and
their accomplishments as to be considered
outside the boundaries of ordinary human ex
istence. Now, most of us, even those of us with
modest endowments, will have to learn to
manage ourselves. We will have to learn to de
velop ourselves. We will have to place our
selves where we can make the greatest contri
bution. And we will have to stay mentally alert
and engaged during a 5oyear 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--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 can
not do at all.
Throughout history, people had little
need to know their strengths. A person was

Peter F. Drucker is the Marnie Rankin
Clarke Professor of Socal Scence and
Management (Ermeritus) at Claremont
Gaduate Universty in Claremont, Cal
fonia This articde is an excerpt from his
book Management Chalenges for the
Z1st CenturyarpeColirns 1999)
born into a position and a line of work: The
peasant's son would also be a peasant; the ar
tisan'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 12
months later, compare the actual results with
your expectations. Ihave been practicing this
method for 15 t0 20 years now, and every time
Ido it, I am surprised. The feedback analysis
showed me, for instance--and to my great sur
prise-that I have an intuitive understanding
of technical people, whether they are engi
neers or accountants or market researchers. It
also showed me that I don't really resonate
with generalists.
Feedback analysis is by no means new. It
was invented sometime in the fourteenth cen
tury by an otherwise totally obscure German
theologian and picked up quite independently,
some 150 years later, by John Calvin and Igna
tius of oyola, 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 insti
tutions 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 lie-and this is the most important
thing to know. The method will show you
what you are doing or failing to do that de
prives 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
feedhack analysis. First and foremost, concen
trate 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 bom,
but everyone can learn trigonometry.
Third, discover where your intellectual arro
gance is causing disabling ignorance and over
come it. Far too many people-especially peo
ple 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, 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 con
trast, often pride themselves on their igno
rance ofelementary accounting or of quantita
taking pride in
tive methods altogether. But
work on
such ignorance is self-defeating. Go to
acquiring the skills and knowledge you need to
fully realize your strengths.
your bad
It is equally essential to remedy
habits-the things you do or fail to do that in
performance. Such
hibit your effectiveness and
in the feedback.
habits will quickly show up
beau
For example, a planner may find that his
does not follow
tiful plans fail because he
through on them. Like so many brilliant peo
ple, he believes that ideas move mountains.
ideas show
But bulldozers move mountains;
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. Man
ners are the lubricating oil of an organization.
It is a law of nature that two moving bodies in
contact with cach other create friction. This is
as true for human beings as it is for inanimate
objects. Manners--simple things like saying
"please" and "thank you" and knowing a per
son's name or asking after her family-enable
two people to work together whether they
like each other or not. Bright people, espe
cially bright young people, often do not un
derstand this. If analysis shows that some
one's brilliant work fails again and again as
soon as cooperation from others is required, it
probably indicates a lack of courtesyhat is,
a lack of manners.
Comparing your expectations with your re
sults also indicates what not to do. We al
have a vast number of arcas in which we have
no talent or skill and little chance of becom
ing even mediocre. In those areas a person
 and especially a knowledge worker-should who had been his admirers held President
not take on work, jobs, and assignments. One Eisenhower in open contempt. He never ad
should waste as little effort as possible on im dressed the questions, they complained, but
proving areas of low competence. It takes far rambled on endlessly about something else.
butcher
more energy and work to improve from in And they constantly ridiculed him for
incoherent and un
competence to mediocrity than it takes to im ing the King's English in
grammatical answers.
prove from first-rate performance to excel
lence. And yet most people-especially most Eiscnhower apparently did not knowhe that
was
listener. When
he was a reader, not a
teachers and most organizations-concen Supremc Commander in Europe, his
aides
trate on making incompetent performers into press
made sure that every question from the hour
mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and time half an
should go instead to making a competent per was presented in writing at least
begin. And then
before a conference was to
son into a star performer. When he
Eisenhower was in total command.
two listeners,
became president, he succeeded
How Do | Perform? Truman. Both
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry
Amazingly few people know how they get men knew themselves to be listeners and both
things done. Indeed, most of us do not even enjoyed free-for-all press
conferences. Eisen
perform
know that different people work and hower may have felt that he
had to doowhat his
differently. Too many people work in ways that two predecessors had done. As a result, he
guarantees journalists
are not their ways, and that almost never even heard the questions
nonperformance. For knowledge workers, How asked. And Eisenhower is not even an extreme
important
do I perform? may be an even more case of a nonlistener.
question than What are my strengths? Johnson destroyed
performs is Afew years later, Lyndon
Like one's strengths, how one measure, by not know
Whether his presidency, in large
It takes far more energy unique. It is a matter of personality. His predecessor,
nurture, it ing that he was a listener. who had assem
personality be a matter of nature or reader
to improve from goes to John Kennedy, was a
surely is formed long before a person given, bled a brilliant group of
writers as his assis
incompetence to work. And how a person performs is a tants, making sure that they
wrote to him be
at or not good at
just as what a person is goodperforming person. Johnson
mediocrity than to can be fore discussing their memos in
is a given. A person's way ofunlikely to be com they kept
kept these people on his staff-andunderstood
improve fromfirst-rate slightly modified, but it is
easily. Just on writing. He never, apparently, as a senator,
pletely changedand certainly not one word of what they wTote. Yet
performance to by doing what they
as people achieve results Johnson had been superb; for parliamentari
results by work
excellence. are good at, they also achieve A few com ans have to be, above all,
listeners.
ing in ways that they best perform.
determine how Few listeners can be made, or can make
mon personality traits usually vice
themselves, into competent readers-and will,
a person performs. versa. The listener who tries to be
a reader
The first thing
Am l a reader ora listener? therefore, suffer the fate of Lyndon Johnson,
or a lis
know is whether you are a reader
to
that whereas the reader who tries to be a listener
tener. Far too few people even know will suffer the fate of Dwight Eisenhower. They
and that peo
there are readers and listeners will not perform or achieve.
which
ple are rarely both. Even fewer know How dol learn? The second thing to know
some ex
of the two they themselves are. But
about how one performs is to know how one
amples will show how damaging such igno learns. Many first-class writers-Winston
rance can be.
Churchill is but one example-do poorly in
When Dwight Eisenhower was Supreme
school. They tend to remember their school
Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, he classmates
confer ing as pure torture. Yet few of their
was the darling of the press. His press remember it the same way. They may not have
ences were famous for their style-General
Eisenhower showed total command of what enjoyed the school very much, but the worst
they suffered was boredom. The explanation is
ever question he was asked, and he was able to
that writers do not, as a rule, learn by listening
describe a situation and explain a policy in two and reading. They learn by writing, Because
or three beautifully polished and elegant sen schools do not allow them to learn this way.
tences. Ten years later, the same journalists

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