Managing Yourself

Yet he has made a huge difference in my life (as has Wally). I'm discovering that although a generation of managers were raised on Drucker's wisdom and insight and benefited as a result, many who are new to supervision are unfamiliar with the depth and applicability of his work. In the March-April 1999 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Drucker did an article titled "Managing Oneself."  It's only about a dozen pages and there was a reprint in  2005.

Here is a sampling that I hope will move you to seek out more of his writing and teaching:

For the strengths-based among you:

Excellence

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 people -- especially most teachers and most organizations -- concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and time should go instead into making a competent person into a star performer.
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Feeling unsettled about a "final" career decision?

Careers

Most people, especially highly gifted people, do not really know where they belong until they are well past their mid-twenties. By that time, however, they should know the answers to the three questions: What are my strengths?  How do I perform? and, What are my values? And then they can and should decide where they belong.

Or rather, they should be able to decide where they do not belong...

Equally important, knowing the answers to these questions enables a person to say to an opportunity, an offer, or an assignment, "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."

Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values.
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Midlife crisis or boredom?

Second Careers

We hear a great deal of talk about the midlife crisis of the executive. It is mostly boredom. At 45, most executives have reached the peak of their business careers, and they know it. After 20 years of doing very much the same kind of work, they are very good at their jobs. But they are not learning or contributing or deriving challenge and satisfaction from the job... That is why managing oneself increasingly leads one to begin a second career (typically by moving from one kind of organization to another; by developing a parallel career, often in a nonprofit; or by starting a new venture, again often a nonprofit).

No one can expect to live very long without experiencing a serious setback in his or her life or work... At such times, a second major interest -- not just a hobby -- may make all the difference.

In a knowledge society we expect everybody to be a success. This is clearly an impossibility. For a great many people, there is at best an absence of failure. Wherever there is success, there has to be failure. And then it is vitally important for the individual, and equally for the individual's family, to have an area in which he or she can contribute, make a difference, and be somebody. That means finding a second area -- whether in a second career, a parallel career, or a social venture -- that offers an opportunity for being a leader, for being respected, for being a success.
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Peter Drucker's starting point for successful management was successful self-management. Why not pause and have a look in the mirror before we stick our heads out of the cubicle today?