HBR'S 10 MUST READS On Managing Yourself

 HBR'S 10 MUST READS

On Managing Yourself

if you read nothing else on managing yourself, read these definitive articles from Harvard Business Review.

BONUS ARTICLE "How Will You Measure Your Life?"

Contents

BONUS ARTICLE

How Will You Measure Your Life? 1 by Clayton M. Christensen, 2010 McKinsey Award Winner

Managing Oneself by Peter F. Drucker

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Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey? by William Oncken, Jr., and Donald L. Wass

How Resilience Works 47 by Diane L. Coutu

Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time 61 by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy

Overloaded Circuits 79

by Edward M. Hallowell

Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life 97

by Stewart D. Friedman

Reclaim Your Job 115

by Sumantra Ghoshal and Heike Bruch

Moments of Greatness: Entering the Fundamental State

of Leadership 127

by Robert E. Quinn

What to Ask the Person in the Mirror 147

by Robert S. Kaplan

Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great

Performance 169

by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee

About the Contributors 189

Index 191

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How Will You Measure Your Life?

by Clayton M. Christensen

BEFORE I PUBLISHED The Innovator's Dilemma, I got a call from Andrew Grove, then the chairman of Intel. He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel. Excited, I flew to Silicon Valley and showed up at the appointed time, only to have Grove say, "Look, stuff has happened. We have only 10 minutes for you. Tell us what your model of disruption means for Intel." I said that I couldn't-that I needed a full 30 minutes to explain the model, because only with it as context would any comments about Intel make sense. Ten minutes into my explanation, Grove interrupted: "Look, I've got your model. Just tell us what it means for Intel."

I insisted that I needed 10 more minutes to describe how the process of disruption had worked its way through a very different industry, steel, so that he and his team could under stand how disruption worked. I told the story of how Nucor and other steel minimills had begun by attacking the lowest end of the market-steel reinforcing bars, or rebar-and later

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moved up toward the high end, undercutting the traditional finished the minimill story, Grove said, "OK,

mills.

it means for Intel is ...," and then went on to articulate what

When I

become the company's strategy for going to the bottom of the

ket to launch the Celeron processor.

I've thought about that a million times since. If I had been s

ered into telling Andy Grove what he should think about the mi

processor business, I'd have been killed. But instead of telling what to think, I taught him how to think-and then he reached I felt was the correct decision on his own. That experience had a profound influence on me. When pe ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question rectly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my mod I'll describe how the process in the model worked its way through industry quite different from their own. And then, more often not, they'll say, "OK, I get it." And they'll answer their own quest

more insightfully than I could have. My class at HBS is structured to help my students underst what good management theory is and how it is built. To that ba bone I attach different models or theories that help students th about the various dimensions of a general manager's job in stim ing innovation and growth. In each session we look at one comp through the lenses of those theories-using them to explain how company got into its situation and to examine what manageriala tions will yield the needed results.

On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those the cal lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questi First, how can I be sure that I'll be happy in my career? Second man I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my fa ecome an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be I stay out of jail? Though the last question sounds lighthearted t. Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent t Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine al ese were good guys-but something in their lives sent them wrong direction.

HOW WILL YOU MEASURE YOUR LIFE?

Idea in Brief

wo Harvard Business School's Chris tensen teaches aspiring MBAS how to apply management and innova tion theories to build stronger companies. But he also believes that these models can help peo ple lead better lives. In this arti cle, he explains how, exploring questions everyone needs to ask. How can I be happy in my career? How can I be sure that my rela tionship with my family is an en during source of happiness? And how can I live my life with in tegrity? The answer to the first question comes from Frederick Herzberg's assertion that the most powerful motivator isn't money: it's the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute, and be recognized. That's why man agement, if practiced well, can be the noblest of occupations; no others offer as many ways to help people find those opportunities. It isn't about buying, selling, and

I get it.

investing companies, as many think. The principles of resource allocation can help people attain happiness at home. If not managed masterfully, what emerges from a firm's resource allocation process can be very different from the strategy man agement intended to follow. That's true in life too: If you're not guided by a clear sense of pur pose, you're likely to fritter away your time and energy on obtaining the most tangible, short-term signs of achievement, not what's really important to you. And just as a focus on marginal costs can cause bad corporate decisions, it can lead people astray. The mar ginal cost of doing something wrong "just this once" always seems alluringly low. You don't see the end result to which that path leads. The key is to define what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.

As the students discuss the answers to these questions, I open my own life to them as a case study of sorts, to illustrate how they can

use the theories from our course to guide their life decisions. One of the theories that gives great insight on the first question how to be sure we find happiness in our careers-is from Frederick Herzberg, who asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn't money; it's the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, con tribute to others, and be recognized for achievements. I tell the stu dents about a vision of sorts I had while I was running the company I founded before becoming an academic. In my mind's eye I saw one of my managers leave for work one morning with a relatively strong

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level of self-esteem. Then I pictured her driving home to be b 10 hours later, feeling unappreciated, frustrated, underutiliz demeaned. I imagined how profoundly her lowered self-est fected the way she interacted with her children. The vision mind then fast-forwarded to another day, when she drove home greater self-esteem-feeling that she had learned a lot, been nized for achieving valuable things, and played a significant the success of some important initiatives. I then imagined how tively that affected her as a spouse and a parent. My conclusion agement is the most noble of professions if it's practiced w other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and tribute to the success of a team. More and more MBA students to school thinking that a career in business means buying, and investing in companies. That's unfortunate. Doing deals do yield the deep rewards that come from building up people. I want students to leave my classroom knowing that.

Create a Strategy for Your Life

A theory that is helpful in answering the second question-How ensure that my relationship with my family proves to be an end source of happiness?-concerns how strategy is defined and im mented. Its primary insight is that a company's strategy is de mined by the types of initiatives that management invests in company's resource allocation process is not managed master what emerges from it can be very different from what manageme intended. Because companies' decision-making systems are a signed to steer investments to initiatives that offer the most targ and immediate returns, companies shortchange investments in tiatives that are crucial to their long-term strategies.

Over the years I've watched the fates of my HBS classmates 1979 unfold; I've seen more and more of them come to reunion happy, divorced, and alienated from their children. I can guar ou that not a single one of them graduated with the deliberate y of getting divorced and raising children who would be

HOW WILL YOU MEASURE YOUR LIFE?

estranged from them. And yet a shocking number of them imple mented that strategy. The reason? They didn't keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy.

It's quite startling that a significant fraction of the 900 students that HBS draws each year from the world's best have given little thought to the purpose of their lives. I tell the students that HBS might be one of their last chances to reflect deeply on that question. If they think that they'll have more time and energy to reflect later, they're nuts, because life only gets more demanding: You take on a mortgage; you're working 70 hours a week; you have a spouse and children.

For me, having a clear purpose in my life has been essential. But it was something I had to think long and hard about before I under stood it. When I was a Rhodes scholar, I was in a very demanding ac ademic program, trying to cram an extra year's worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasn't studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it-and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life.

Had I instead spent that hour each day learning the latest tech niques for mastering the problems of autocorrelation in regression analysis, I would have badly misspent my life. I apply the tools of econometrics a few times a year, but I apply my knowledge of the purpose of my life every day. It's the single most useful thing I've ever learned. I promise my students that if they take the time to fig ure out their life purpose, they'll look back on it as the most impor tant thing they discovered at HBS. If they don't figure it out, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the very rough seas of life. Clarity about their purpose will trump knowledge of activity-based costing, balanced scorecards, core competence, dis ruptive innovation, the four Ps, and the five forces. My purpose grew out of my religious faith, but faith isn't the only thing that gives people direction. For example, one of my former

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The Class of 2010

"I CAME TO BUSINESS SCHOOL knowing exactly what I wanted to and I'm leaving choosing the exact opposite. I've worked in the private all my life, because everyone always told me that's where smart people But I've decided to try government and see if I can find more meaning the "I used to think that industry was very safe. The recession has shown us nothing is safe."

Ruhana Hafiz, Harvard Business School, Class of 2010

Her Plans: To join the FBI as a special adviser (a management track pos "You could see a shift happening at HBS. Money used to be number one job search. When you make a ton of money, you want more of it. Ironic You start to forget what the drivers of happiness are and what things a ally important. A lot of people on campus see money differently now. think, 'What's the minimum I need to have, and what else drives my life, stead of 'What's the place where I can get the maximum of both? Patrick Chun, Harvard Business School, Class of 2010

His Plans: To join Bain Capital "The financial crisis helped me realize that you have to do what you really in life. My current vision of success is based on the impact I can have

students decided that his purpose was to bring honesty a economic prosperity to his country and to raise children who we capably committed to this cause, and to each other, as he was purpose is focused on family and others-as mine is. The choice and successful pursuit of a profession is but one for achieving your purpose. But without a purpose, life can be hollow.

Allocate Your Resources

Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy. talent ultimately shape your life's strategy. I have a bunch of "businesses" that compete for these resou I'm trying to have a rewarding relationship with my wife, raise kids, contribute to my community, succeed in my career, cont

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HOW WILL YOU MEASURE YOUR LIFET

experiences I can gain, and the happiness I can find personally, much more so than the pursuit of money or prestige. My main motivations are (1) to be with my family and people i care about; (2) to do something fun, exciting, and im pactful; and (3) to pursue a long-term career in entrepreneurship, where I can build companies that change the way the world works."

Matt Salzberg, Harvard Business School, Class of 2010 His Plans: To work for Bessemer Venture Partners

"Because I'm returning to McKinsey, it probably seems like not all that much has changed for me. But while I was at HBS, I decided to do the dual degree at the Kennedy School. With the elections in 2008 and the economy looking shaky, it seemed more compelling for me to get a better understanding of the public and nonprofit sectors. In a way, that drove my return to McKinsey, where I'll have the ability to explore private, public, and nonprofit sectors.

"The recession has made us step back and take stock of how lucky we are.

The crisis to us is 'Are we going to have a job by April?' Crisis to a lot of people

is 'Are we going to stay in our home?"* John Coleman, Harvard Business School, Class of 2010 His Plans: To return to McKinsey & Company

to my church, and so on. And I have exactly the same problem that a corporation does. I have a limited amount of time and energy and talent. How much do I devote to each of these pursuits? Allocation choices can make your life turn out to be very different

from what you intended. Sometimes that's good: Opportunities that

you never planned for emerge. But if you misinvest your resources,

the outcome can be bad. As I think about my former classmates who

inadvertently invested for lives of hollow unhappiness, I can't help

believing that their troubles relate right back to a short-term

perspective.

When people who have a high need for achievement-and that in cludes all Harvard Business School graduates-have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they'll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we're moving

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forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete pr tion, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get moted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relation with your spouse and children typically doesn't offer that same mediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It's not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands your hips and say, "I raised a good son or a good daughter? You neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to basis, it doesn't seem as if things are deteriorating. People who driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinver their families and overinvest in their careers-even though intim and loving relationships with their families are the most powe and enduring source of happiness.

If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and ove you'll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer imme ate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that le you'll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocati fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once sa mattered most.

Create a Culture

There's an important model in our class called the Tools of Cooper tion, which basically says that being a visionary manager isn't allits cracked up to be. It's one thing to see into the foggy future with ac ity and chart the course corrections that the company must make But it's quite another to persuade employees who might not see the changes ahead to line up and work cooperatively to take the com pany in that new direction. Knowing what tools to wield to elicit the needed cooperation is a critical managerial skill.

The theory arrays these tools along two dimensions-the extent to which members of the organization agree on what they want from their participation in the enterprise, and the extent to which they agree on what actions will produce the desired results. When there is little agreement on both axes, you have to use "power tools coercion, threats, punishment, and so on-to secure cooperation.

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HOW WILL YOU MEASURE YOUR LIFE?

Many companies start in this quadrant, which is why the founding executive team must play such an assertive role in defining what must be done and how. If employees' ways of working together to ad dress those tasks succeed over and over, consensus begins to form. MIT's Edgar Schein has described this process as the mechanism by which a culture is built. Ultimately, people don't even think about whether their way of doing things yields success. They embrace pri orities and follow procedures by instinct and assumption rather than by explicit decision-which means that they've created a culture. Culture, in compelling but unspoken ways, dictates the proven, ac ceptable methods by which members of the group address recurrent problems. And culture defines the priority given to different types of problems. It can be a powerful management tool.

In using this model to address the question, How can I be sure that my family becomes an enduring source of happiness?, my stu dents quickly see that the simplest tools that parents can wield to elicit cooperation from children are power tools. But there comes a point during the teen years when power tools no longer work. At that point parents start wishing that they had begun working with their children at a very young age to build a culture at home in which children instinctively behave respectfully toward one an other, obey their parents, and choose the right thing to do. Families have cultures, just as companies do. Those cultures can be built consciously or evolve inadvertently.

If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won't magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into your fam ily's culture and you have to think about this very early on. Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.

Avoid the "Marginal Costs" Mistake

We're taught in finance and economics that in evaluating alterna tive investments, we should ignore sunk and fixed costs, and in stead base decisions on the marginal costs and marginal revenues

9HOW WILL YOU MEASURE YOUR LIFE?

dresses the thind question discuss with my s

over the line just that one time and then not done it again. But look ing back on it, resisting the temptation whose logic was "In this ex tenuating circumstance, just this once, it's OK" has proven to be one of the most important decisions of my life. Why? My life has been one unending stream of extenuating circumstances. Had I crossed the line that one time, I would have done it over and over in the years that followed.

The lesson I learned from this is that it's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to "just this once," based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you'll regret where you end up. You've got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.

Remember the Importance of Humility

I got this insight when I was asked to teach a class on humility at Har vard College. I asked all the students to describe the most humble person they knew. One characteristic of these humble people stood out: They had a high level of self-esteem. They knew who they were, and they felt good about who they were. We also decided that humil ity was defined not by self-deprecating behavior or attitudes but by the esteem with which you regard others. Good behavior flows nat urally from that kind of humility. For example, you would never steal from someone, because you respect that person too much. You'd never lie to someone, either.

It's crucial to take a sense of humility into the world. By the time you make it to a top graduate school, almost all your learning has come from people who are smarter and more experienced than you: parents, teachers, bosses. But once you've finished at Harvard Busi ness School or any other top academic institution, the vast majority of people you'll interact with on a day-to-day basis may not be smarter than you. And if your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited. But if you have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody, your learning opportunities will be unlimited.

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NCAA oumandmade it to fhe final four tumedors

champlonhtil gte vies schetiuled to be played on a Simday Ta

center Every one of the guys on the team came to me and it

I should do I got a very dear feeling that I should be

thousand Sundays in my life in theory suey lould have crossed

CHRISTENSEN

Generally, you can be humble only if you feel really g yourself and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves, too. When we see people acting in an abusive good arrogant, or demeaning manner toward others, their behavio almost always is a symptom of their lack of self-esteem. They need to put someone else down to feel good about themselves.

Choose the Right Yardstick

This past year I was diagnosed with cancer and faced the possibility that my life would end sooner than I'd planned. Thankfully, it now looks as if I'll be spared. But the experience has given me important insight into my life.

I have a pretty clear idea of how my ideas have generated enormous revenue for companies that have used my research; I know I've hada substantial impact. But as I've confronted this disease, it's been inter esting to see how unimportant that impact is to me now. I've con cluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn't dollars but the individual people whose lives I've touched.

I think that's the way it will work for us all. Don't worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end your life will be judged a success.

Originally published in July 2010. Reprint R10078

Managing Oneself

by Peter F. Drucker

HISTORY'S GREAT ACHIEVERS-a Napoléon, a da Vinci, a Mozart have always managed themselves. That, in large measure, is what makes them great achievers. But they are rare exceptions, so un usual both in their talents and their accomplishments as to be considered outside the boundaries of ordinary human existence. Now, most of us, even those of us with modest endowments, will have to learn to manage ourselves. We will have to learn to develop ourselves. We will have to place ourselves where we can make the greatest contribution. And we will have to stay mentally alert and engaged during a 50-year 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 usu ally 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 cannot do at all.

Throughout history, people had little need to know their strengths. A person was born into a position and a line of work: The peasant's son would also be a peasant; the artisan's daughter, an artisan's wife; and

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so on. But now people have choices. We need to know our strengths in The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback order to know where we belong.

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. I have been prac ticing this method for 15 to 20 years now, and every time I do it, I am surprised. The feedback analysis showed me, for instance-and to my great surprise-that I have an intuitive understanding of techni cal people, whether they are engineers or accountants or market re searchers. It also showed me that I don't really resonate with

Feedback analysis is by no means new. It was invented sometime generalists. in the fourteenth century by an otherwise totally obscure German theologian and picked up quite independently, some 150 years later, by John Calvin and Ignatius of Loyola, each of whom incorporated it into the practice of his followers. In fact, the steadfast focus on per formance 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 withina 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 feedback analysis. First and foremost, concentrate 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 knowledge-and those can usually be

filled. Mathematicians are born, but everyone can learn trigonometry. Third, discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing dis abling ignorance and overcome it. Far too many people-especially

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Idea in Brief

We live in an age of unprece dented opportunity: If you've got ambition, drive, and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen

profession-regardless of where you started out. But with opportu nity comes responsibility. Compa

nies today aren't managing their knowledge workers' careers. Rather, we must each be our own chief executive 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, you'll need to cultivate a deep understanding of yourself. What are your most valuable strengths and most dangerous weaknesses? Equally important, how do you learn and work with others? What are your most deeply held values? And in what type of work environ ment can you make the greatest contribution?

The implication is clear: Only when you operate from a combination of your strengths and self-knowledge can you achieve true-and lasting excellence.

people with great expertise in one area-are contemptuous of knowl

edge 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 contrast, often pride themselves on their ignorance of elementary accounting or of quantitative methods altogether. But taking pride in such ignorance is self-defeating. Go to work on acquir ing the skills and knowledge you need to fully realize your strengths.

It is equally essential to remedy your bad habits-the things you do or fail to do that inhibit your effectiveness and performance. Such habits will quickly show up in the feedback. For example, a planner may find that his beautiful plans fail because he does not follow through on them. Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show 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

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Idea in Practice

To build a life of excellence, begin by asking yourself these questions:

"What are my strengths?"

To accurately identify your strengths, use feedback analysis. Every time you make a key deci sion, write down the outcome you expect. Several months later, compare the actual results with your expected results. 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 unpro ductive habits are preventing you from creating the outcomes you desire? In identifying opportunities for improvement, don't waste time cultivating skill areas where you have little competence. Instead, concentrate on-and build on your strengths.

"How do I work?"

in what ways do you work best? Do you process information most ef fectively by reading it, or by hear- ing others discuss it? Do you accomplish the most by working with other people, or by working alone? Do you perform best while making decisions, or while advis- ing others on key matters? Are you in top form when things get

MANAGING ONESELF

stressful, or do you function optimally in a highly predictable environment?

"What are my values?"

What are your ethics? What do you see as your most important re sponsibilities for living a worthy. ethical life? Do your organization's ethics resonate with your own val ues? If not, your career will likely be marked by frustration and poor performance.

"Where do I belong?"

Consider your strengths, preferred work style, and values. Based on these qualities, in what kind of work environment would you fit in best? Find the perfect fit, and you'll transform yourself from a merely acceptable employee into a star performer.

"What can I contribute?"

In earlier eras, companies told businesspeople what their contri bution should be. Today, you have choices. To decide how you can best enhance your organization's performance, first ask what the situation requires. Based on your strengths, work style, and values, how might you make the greatest contribution to your organization's efforts?

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. Manners are the lubricating oil of an organization. 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. Manners-simple things like saying "please" and "thank you" and knowing a person's name or asking after her family-enable two people to work together whether they like each other or not. Bright people, especially bright young people, often do not under stand this. If analysis shows that someone's brilliant work fails again and again as soon as cooperation from others is required, it probably indicates a lack of courtesy-that is, a lack of manners.

Comparing your expectations with your results also indicates what not to do. We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no tal ent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a person-and especially a knowledge worker-should not take on work, jobs, and assignments. One should waste as little effort as possi ble 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-concen trate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and time should go instead to making a competent person into a star performer.

How Do I Perform?

Amazingly few people know how they get things done. Indeed, most of us do not even know that different people work and perform differently. Too many people work in ways that are not their ways, and that almost guarantees nonperformance. For knowledge work ers, How do I perform? may be an even more important question than What are my strengths?

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MANAGING ONESELF

Like one's strengths, how one performs is unique. It is a matter personality. Whether personality be a matter of nature of nurture surely is formed long before a person goes to work. And how person performs is a given, just as what a person is good at of good at is a given. A person's way of performing can be slightly thes ified, but it is unlikely to be completely changed-and certainly se easily. Just as people achieve results by doing what they are good they also achieve results by working in ways that they best perfo A few common personality traits usually determine how a person performs.

Am I a reader or a listener? The first thing to know is whether you are a reader or a listener.

too few people even know that there are readers and listeners a

that people are rarely both. Even fewer know which of the two the

themselves are. But some examples will show how damaging such

ignorance can be.

When Dwight Eisenhower was Supreme Commander of the Alle forces in Europe, he was the darling of the press. His press confe ences were famous for their style-General Eisenhower showd otal command of whatever question he was asked, and he was d o describe a situation and explain a policy in two or three beaut ally polished and elegant sentences. Ten years later, the same jou alists who had been his admirers held President Eisenhowers en contempt. He never addressed the questions, they con ained, but rambled on endlessly about something else. And the nstantly ridiculed him for butchering the King's English in inco rent and ungrammatical answers.

Eisenhower apparently did not know that he was a reader, ener. When he was Supreme Commander in Europe, his ade de sure that every question from the press was presented ming at least half an hour before a conference was to begin. A Eisenhower was in total command. When he became pre , he succeeded two listeners, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ha man. Both men knew themselves to be listeners and bother free-for-all press conferences. Eisenhower may have felt d

he had to do what his two predecessors had done. As a result, he never even heard the questions journalists asked. And Eisenhower is not even an extreme case of a nonlistener.

A few years later, Lyndon Johnson destroyed his presidency, in large measure, by not knowing that he was a listener. His predeces sof, John Kennedy, was a reader who had assembled a brilliant group of writers as his assistants, making sure that they wrote to him before discussing their memos in person. Johnson kept these people on his staff and they kept on writing. He never, apparently, understood one word of what they wrote. Yet as a senator, Johnson had been su perb; for parliamentarians have to be, above all, listeners.

Few listeners can be made, or can make themselves, into competent readers and vice versa. The listener who tries to be a reader will, therefore, suffer the fate of Lyndon Johnson, whereas the reader who tries to be a listener will suffer the fate of Dwight Eisenhower. They will not perform or achieve.

How do I learn?

The second thing to know about how one performs is to know how one learns. Many first-class writers-Winston Churchill is but one example-do poorly in school. They tend to remember their schooling as pure torture. Yet few of their classmates remember it the same way. They may not have enjoyed the school very much, but the worst they suffered was boredom. The explanation is that writers do not, as a rule, learn by listening and reading. They learn by writing. Because schools do not allow them to learn this way, they get poor grades.

Schools everywhere are organized on the assumption that there is only one right way to learn and that it is the same way for everybody. But to be forced to learn the way a school teaches is sheer hell for students who learn differently. Indeed, there are probably half a dozen different ways to learn.

There are people, like Churchill, who learn by writing. Some people learn by taking copious notes. Beethoven, for example, left behind an enormous number of sketchbooks, yet he said he never actually looked at them when he composed. Asked why he kept them, he is reported to have replied, "If I don't write it down

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immediately, I forget it right away. If I put it into a sketchbook never forget it and I never have to look it up again." Some people learn by doing. Others learn by hearing themselves talk. A chief executive I know who converted a small and medioc

family business into the leading company in its industry was one those people who learn by talking. He was in the habit of calling entire senior staff into his office once a week and then talking them for two or three hours. He would raise policy issues and arg three different positions on each one. He rarely asked his associat for comments or questions; he simply needed an audience to himself talk. That's how he learned. And although he is a fairly treme case, learning through talking is by no means an unusua method. Successful trial lawyers learn the same way, as do man medical diagnosticians (and so do I).

Of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, understanding you learn is the easiest to acquire. When I ask people, "How do learn?" most of them know the answer. But when I ask, "Do you ata this knowledge?" few answer yes. And yet, acting on this knowled is the key to performance; or rather, not acting on this knowledge demns one to nonperformance.

Am I a reader or a listener? and How do I learn? are the first que tions to ask. But they are by no means the only ones. To manag yourself effectively, you also have to ask, Do I work well with peop or am I a loner? And if you do work well with people, you then mas ask, In what relationship?

Some people work best as subordinates. General George Pat the great American military hero of World War II, is a prime examp Patton was America's top troop commander. Yet when he proposed for an independent command, General George Marshal the U.S. chief of staff-and probably the most successful pic of men in U.S. history-said, "Patton is the best subordinate American army has ever produced, but he would be the w commander."

Some people work best as team members. Others work be alone. Some are exceptionally talented as coaches and mentors ers are simply incompetent as mentors.

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Another crucial question is, Do I produce results as a decision maker or as an adviser? A great many people perform best as advis ers but cannot take the burden and pressure of making the decision. A good many other people, by contrast, need an adviser to force themselves to think; then they can make decisions and act on them with speed, self-confidence, and courage.

This is a reason, by the way, that the number two person in an or ganization 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. But in the number one spot, the same person fails. He or she knows what the decision should be but cannot accept the responsibility of actually making it.

Other important questions to ask include, Do I perform well under stress, or do I need a highly structured and predictable envi ronment? Do I work best in a big organization or a small one? Few people work well in all kinds of environments. Again and again, I have seen people who were very successful in large organizations flounder miserably when they moved into smaller ones. And the re verse is equally true.

The conclusion bears repeating: Do not try to change yourself-you are unlikely to succeed. But work hard to improve the way you perform. And try not to take on work you cannot perform or will only perform poorly.

What Are My Values?

To be able to manage yourself, you finally have to ask, What are my values? This is not a question of ethics. With respect to ethics, the rules are the same for everybody, and the test is a simple one. I call it the "mirror test."

In the early years of this century, the most highly respected diplo mat of all the great powers was the German ambassador in London. He was clearly destined for great things-to become his country's foreign minister, at least, if not its federal chancellor. Yet in 1906 he

21DRUCKER

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abruptly resigned rather than preside over a dinner given by diplomatic corps for Edward VII. The king was a notorious wor izer and made it clear what kind of dinner he wanted. The amb dor is reported to have said, "I refuse to see a pimp in the mu the morning when I shave."

That is the mirror test. Ethics requires that you ask you What kind of person do I want to see in the mirror in the monti What is ethical behavior in one kind of organization or situ is ethical behavior in another. But ethics is only part of a system-especially of an organization's value system.

To work in an organization whose value system is unaccep or incompatible with one's own condemns a person both to f tion and to nonperformance. Consider the experience of a highly successful human res

executive whose company was acquired by a bigger organiz After the acquisition, she was promoted to do the kind of wo did best, which included selecting people for important posit The executive deeply believed that a company should hire p for such positions from the outside only after exhausting all side possibilities. But her new company believed in first looking side "to bring in fresh blood." There is something to be said for approaches-in my experience, the proper one is to do some of They are, however, fundamentally incompatible-not as policies as values. They bespeak different views of the relationship be organizations and people; different views of the responsibility organization to its people and their development; and dife views of a person's most important contribution to an ente After several years of frustration, the executive quit-at com able financial loss. Her values and the values of the organi simply were not compatible.

Similarly, whether a pharmaceutical company tries to results by making constant, small improvements or by a occasional, highly expensive, and risky "breakthroughs" is marily an economic question. The results of either strateg pretty much the same. At bottom, there is a conflict between system that sees the company's contribution in terms of

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physicians do better what they already do and a value system that is oriented toward making scientific discoveries.

Whether a business should be run for short-term results or with a focus on the long term is likewise a question of values. Financial an alysts believe that businesses can be run for both simultaneously. Successful businesspeople know better. To be sure, 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. This is not primarily a disagreement about economics. It is fundamentally a value conflict regarding the function of a busi ness and the responsibility of management.

Value conflicts are not limited to business organizations. One of the fastest-growing pastoral churches in the United States measures success by the number of new parishioners. Its leadership believes that what matters is how many newcomers join the congregation. The Good Lord will then minister to their spiritual needs or at least to the needs of a sufficient percentage. Another pastoral, evangelical church believes that what matters is people's spiritual growth. The church eases out newcomers who join but do not enter into its spiri tual life.

Again, this is not a matter of numbers. At first glance, it appears that the second church grows more slowly. But it retains a far larger proportion of newcomers than the first one does. Its growth, in other words, is more solid. This is also not a theological problem, or only secondarily so. It is a problem about values. In a public debate, one pastor argued, "Unless you first come to church, you will never find

the gate to the Kingdom of Heaven. "No," answered the other. "Until you first look for the gate to the Kingdom of Heaven, you don't belong in church."

Organizations, like people, have values. To be effective in an or ganization, a person's values must be compatible with the organiza tion's values. They do not need to be the same, but they must be close enough to coexist. Otherwise, the person will not only be frus trated but also will not produce results.

A person's strengths and the way that person performs rarely con flict; the two are complementary. But there is sometimes a conflict

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between a person's values and his or her strengths. What one d well-even very well and successfully-may not fit with one's v system. In that case, the work may not appear to be worth devot one's life to (or even a substantial portion thereof). If I may, allow me to interject a personal note. Many years

I too had to decide between my values and what I was doing sucos fully, I was doing very well as a young investment banker in Lond in the mid-1930s, and the work clearly fit my strengths. Yet I did see myself making a contribution as an asset manager. People, In ized, were what I valued, and I saw no point in being the richest in the cemetery. I had no money and no other job prospects. Desp the continuing Depression, I quit-and it was the right thing to Values, in other words, are and should be the ultimate test.

Where Do I Belong?

A small number of people know very early where they belong. Ma ematicians, musicians, and cooks, for instance, are usually mathe maticians, musicians, and cooks by the time they are four or five year old. Physicians usually decide on their careers in their teens, earlier. But most people, especially highly gifted people, do not know where they belong until they are well past their mid-twent By that time, however, they should know the answers to the the questions: What are my strengths? How do I perform? and, Whata my values? And then they can and should decide where they bel Or rather, they should be able to decide where they do not bel The person who has learned that he or she does not perform well a big organization should have learned to say no to a position in The person who has learned that he or she is not a decision ma should have learned to say no to a decision-making assignme General Patton (who probably never learned this himself) have learned to say no to an independent command.

Equally important, knowing the answer to these question ables a person to say to an opportunity, an offer, or an assign "Yes, I will do that. But this is the way I should be doing it. This way it should be structured. This is the way the relationships sh

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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. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person-hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre-into an outstanding performer.

What Should I Contribute?

Throughout history, the great majority of people never had to ask the question, What should I contribute? They were told what to con tribute, and their tasks were dictated either by the work itself-as it was for the peasant or artisan-or by a master or a mistress-as it was for domestic servants. And until very recently, it was taken for granted that most people were subordinates who did as they were told. Even in the 1950s and 1960s, the new knowledge workers (the so-called organization men) looked to their company's personnel department to plan their careers.

Then in the late 1960s, no one wanted to be told what to do any longer. Young men and women began to ask, What do I want to do? And what they heard was that the way to contribute was to "do your own thing." But this solution was as wrong as the organization men's had been. Very few of the people who believed that doing one's own thing would lead to contribution, self-fulfillment, and success achieved any of the three.

But still, there is no return to the old answer of doing what you are told or assigned to do. Knowledge workers in particular have to learn to ask a question that has not been asked before: What should my contribution be? To answer it, they must address three distinct ele ments: 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? And finally, What results have to be achieved to make a difference?

Consider the experience of a newly appointed hospital adminis trator. The hospital was big and prestigious, but it had been coasting

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same crop as soon as the frost was out of the ground. Even those people who did things that were not "common" worked alone, they did not have to tell anyone what they were doing. Today the great majority of people work with others who ha

fe

different tasks and responsibilities. The marketing vice presiden may have come out of sales and know everything about sales, b she knows nothing about the things she has never done-pricing advertising, packaging, and the like. So the people who do the things must make sure that the marketing vice president under stands what they are trying to do, why they are trying to do it, how they are going to do it, and what results to expect.

If the marketing vice president does not understand what the high-grade knowledge specialists are doing, it is primarily the fault, not hers. They have not educated her. Conversely, it is the marketing vice president's responsibility to make sure that all of te coworkers understand how she looks at marketing: what her g are, how she works, and what she expects of herself and of each o of them.

Even people who understand the importance of taking respons bility for relationships often do not communicate sufficiently wi their associates. They are afraid of being thought presumptuous inquisitive or stupid. They are wrong. Whenever someone goes to or her associates and says, "This is what I am good at. This is ho I work. These are my values. This is the contribution I plan to conce trate on and the results I should be expected to deliver," the respon is always, "This is most helpful. But why didn't you tell me earlier And one gets the same reaction-without exception, in experience-if one continues by asking, "And what do I need t know about your strengths, how you perform, your values, and you proposed contribution?" In fact, knowledge workers should reque this of everyone with whom they work, whether as subordinate, perior, colleague, or team member. And again, whenever this done, the reaction is always, "Thanks for asking me. But why d you ask me earlier?"

Organizations are no longer built on force but on trust. The tence of trust between people does not necessarily mean that

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MANAGING ONESELF

like one another. It means that they understand one another. Taking responsibility for relationships is therefore an absolute necessity. It is a duty. Whether one is a member of the organization, a consultant to it, a supplier, or a distributor, one owes that responsibility to all one's coworkers: those whose work one depends on as well as those who depend on one's own work.

The Second Half of Your Life

When work for most people meant manual labor, there was no need to worry about the second half of your life. You simply kept on doing what you had always done. And if you were lucky enough to survive 40 years of hard work in the mill or on the railroad, you were quite happy to spend the rest of your life doing nothing. Today, however, most work is knowledge work, and knowledge workers are not "fin ished" after 40 years on the job, they are merely bored. We hear a great deal of talk about the midlife crisis of the execu

tive. 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. And yet they are still likely to face an other 20 if not 25 years of work. That is why managing oneself in creasingly leads one to begin a second career.

There are three ways to develop a second career. The first is actu ally to start one. Often this takes nothing more than moving from one kind of organization to another: the divisional controller in a large corporation, for instance, becomes the controller of a medium sized hospital. But there are also growing numbers of people who move into different lines of work altogether: the business executive or government official who enters the ministry at 45, for instance; or the midlevel manager who leaves corporate life after 20 years to at tend law school and become a small-town attorney.

We will see many more second careers undertaken by people who have achieved modest success in their first jobs. Such people have substantial skills, and they know how to work. They need a

29opportunity for being a leader,

The challenges of managing oneself may seem obvious, if n elementary And the answers may seem self-evident to the point ef ang male. But managing oneself requires new and unprece dented things from the individual, and especially from the knowledg werk In effect, managing oneself demands that each knowledg worker think and behave like a chief executive officer. Furthe the shift from manual workers who do as they are told to knowled workers who have to manage themselves profoundly challenges s cal structure Every existing society, even the most individualisti ane kes two things for granted, if only subconsciously: that organi ons outive workers, and that most people stay put. Bertoday the opposite is true. Knowledge workers outlive orgas itions and they are mobile. The need to manage oneself is there human affairs.

ara solventure-that offers an be respected for being a success.

forting a revolution in Originally published in January 1999. Reprint Rogo

Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey?

by William Oncken, Jr., and Donald L. Wass

WHY IS IT THAT MANAGERS are typically running out of time while

their subordinates are typically running out of work? Here we shall

explore the meaning of management time as it relates to the inter

action between managers and their bosses, their peers, and their

subordinates.

Specifically, we shall deal with three kinds of management time: Boss-imposed time-used to accomplish those activities that the boss requires and that the manager cannot disregard without direct and swift penalty.

System-imposed time-used to accommodate requests from

peers for active support. Neglecting these requests will also

result in penalties, though not always as direct or swift.

Self-imposed time-used to do those things that the manager originates or agrees to do. A certain portion of this kind of time, however, will be taken by subordinates and is called subordinate-imposed time. The remaining portion will be the manager's own and is called discretionary time. Self-imposed time is not subject to penalty since neither the boss nor the system can discipline the manager for not doing what they didn't know he had intended to do in the first place.

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HBR'S 10 MUST READS

On Managing Yourself

The path to your professional success starts with a critical look in the mirror.

If you read nothing else on managing yourself, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles to select the most important ones to help you maximize yourself.

This book will inspire you to: Stay engaged throughout your 50-year work life

• Tap into your deepest values • Solicit candid feedback

Replenish physical and mental energy

• Balance work, home, community, and self Spread positive energy throughout your organization

• Rebound from tough times

Decrease distractibility and frenzy Delegate and develop employees' initiative

MANAGEMENT

ISBN 978-1-4221-5799-2

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