Peter F. Drucker's article "Managing Oneself" give people, especially knowledge workers inspiration and direction for career path development and life.
Firstly, the knowledge worker should know what is his strengths, which can only be found by the feedback analysis. Whenever one makes a key decision, and whatever one does a key action, one writes down what one expects will happen. And nine months or twelve months later one then feeds back from results to expectations. After several years or short period of time, this simple procedure will tell people first where their strengths are and where they have no strengths. Then people can act to concentrate on one's strengths, improve one's strengths (waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence), overcome intellectual arrogance, acquire the skills and knowledge needed to make one's strengths fully productive, and remedy one's bad habits. Particularly the feedback analysis can identify the areas where intellectual arrogance causes disabling ignorance, especially for people with high knowledge in one area who are often contemptuous of knowledge in other areas.
Secondly, people should know how he performs (methods of learning and delivery). To know about how one performs, people need know that he is a reader or a listener, how he learn (via taking note or hear himself talk, many others), he works best as subordinates or an independent commander, he works best as a minnow in a big organization or best as a big fish in a small organization, he performs well under stress or not, he needs a highly structured and predictable environment or not, and he produces results as a decision maker or as an adviser.
Finally, people need to know what are his values. The method is mirror test which requires to ask oneself "what kind of person do I want to see when I shave myself in the morning? One's values must be compatible with the organization's values.
Based on the answers to the three questions, people can and should decide where he belongs and what should he contribute. As Drucker summaries: "Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strength, their method of work, and their values."
Besides managing oneself, the same holds true for "managing" coworkers via understanding the people you work with for making use of their strengths, their ways of working, and their values. Because we need to work with others we also need to take responsibility for our relationships. This requires us to accept other people as much as individuals as ourselves and take responsibility for communication. We should ask everyone with whom we work the following question: what do I need to know about your strengths, how you perform, your values, and your proposed contribution.
Too many people today let other people dictate what they should do in their careers. This book is a wonderful and quick way to understand how you, and the people around you, then direct people to develop their careers. Drucker always give his readers a new way of thinking.
