A R T I C L E

Managing Oneselfby Peter F. Drucker

P R O D U C T N U M B E R 4 4 4 4

New sections to

guide you through

the article:

• The Idea in Brief

• The Idea at Work

• Exploring Further . . .

Self-knowledge isn’t

just a tool for personal

enrichment.

In today’s knowledge

economy, it’s crucial for

survival.

HBROnPoint

F R O M T H E H A R V A R D B U S I N E S S R E V I E W

M your career is a fundamentally

different proposition today. Whereas the com-

pany used to manage individuals’ careers, indi-

viduals must now learn to develop their careers

themselves. The average working life now lasts

some 50 years—to stay alert and engaged that

long, you need to know how and when to

change the work you do. What’s more, people

have more options about the type of work they

do—at the same time that companies are call-

ing for employees who put their hearts and

minds into their work. So it’s increasingly

important to put yourself in positions where

you can make the greatest contribution—where

there’s the best fit between your passion and

what the situation requires.

The implication is clear: for career decisions,

self-knowledge has never been more important.

Managing Oneself

A few overarching questions can get you

started on the road to self-understanding:

What are your strengths?

Most people think they know what they’re

good at—they’re usually wrong. The way to

discover your strengths is through feedback

analysis. Every time you take an important

action, write down what you expect to happen.

Several months later, compare the actual

results with your expectations. Over time, pat-

terns will emerge: you’ll be able to see what

you’re good at, what you need to enhance, and

what bad habits you need to change.

• Don’t waste time on areas of low compe-

tence—concentrate on your strengths.

• Work to overcome those areas in which

intellectual arrogance—the belief that cer-

tain kinds of knowledge are unimpor-

tant—or bad habits are preventing you

from fully realizing your strengths.

How do you perform?

The point is not to try to change yourself, but

to improve the ways you work best.

• Do you process information best by read-

ing it or by hearing others discuss it?

• Do you work well with people, or are you

primarily a loner?

• Do you perform best as a decision maker

or as an adviser?

HBR OnPoint © 2000 President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.

• Do you function well under stress, or do you

require a highly predictable environment?

What are your values?

If the organization’s ethics and its overall view

of its responsibilities aren’t consonant with

yours, you’re condemning yourself to frustra-

tion and poor performance.

Where do you belong?

Knowing your strengths, preferred work meth-

ods, and values gives you a feel for where you fit

in best. That knowledge can transform an ordi-

nary worker into a star performer. Most suc-

cessful careers are not planned; when you know

where you belong, you’re better able to respond

to unexpected opportunities.

What should you contribute?

Throughout most of history, workers were told

what they should contribute. Today, they have

choices about the matter.

• What does the situation require?

• Given your strengths, your way of perform-

ing, and your values, how can you make the

greatest contribution to the situation?

• What results have to be achieved to make a

difference? Since it’s rarely possible to plan

very far in advance, concentrate on achiev-

ing results within the next 18 months.

I N B R I E F

T H E I D E A A T W O R K

T H E I D E A

istory’s great achievers – a Napoleon, a daVinci, a Mozart –have always managed them-

selves. That, in large measure, is whatmakes them great achievers. But theyare rare exceptions, so unusual both intheir talents and their accomplishmentsas to be considered outside the bound-aries of ordinary human existence. Now,most of us, even those of us with modestendowments, will have to learn to manage

ARTWORK BY CRAIG FRAZIER Copyright © 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.

Success in the knowledge economy comes tothose who know themselves –their strengths,

their values, and how they best perform.

Managing

Oneselfby Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker is the Marie Rankin Clarke Professor of SocialScience and Management at Claremont Graduate University inClaremont, California. This article is an excerpt from his forth-coming book Management Challenges for the 21st Century(HarperCollins, May 1999).

H

ourselves. We will have to learn to develop our-selves. We will have to place ourselves where wecan make the greatest contribution. And we willhave to stay mentally alert and engaged during a 50-year working life, which means knowing how andwhen to change the work we do.

What Are My Strengths?Most people think they know what they are goodat. They are usually wrong. More often, peopleknow what they are not good at – and even thenmore people are wrong than right. And yet, a personcan perform only from strength. One cannot buildperformance on weaknesses, let alone on some-thing one cannot do at all.

Throughout history, people had little need toknow their strengths. A person was born into a po-sition and a line of work: the peasant’s son wouldalso be a peasant; the artisan’s daughter, an artisan’swife, and so on. But now people have choices. Weneed to know our strengths in order to know wherewe belong.

The only way to discover your strengths isthrough feedback analysis. Whenever you make akey decision or take a key action, write down whatyou expect will happen. Nine or 12 months later,compare the actual results with your expectations.I have been practicing this method for 15 to 20years 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 intuitiveunderstanding of technical people, whether theyare engineers or accountants or market researchers.It also showed me that I don’t really resonate withgeneralists.

Feedback analysis is by no means new. It was invented sometime in the fourteenth century by anotherwise totally obscure German theologian andpicked up quite independently, some 150 years later,by John Calvin and Ignatius Loyola, each of whomincorporated it into the practice of his followers. Infact, the steadfast focus on performance and resultsthat this habit produces explains why the institu-

tions these two men founded, the Calvinist churchand the Jesuit order, came to dominate Europewithin 30 years.

Practiced consistently, this simple method willshow you within a fairly short period of time, maybetwo or three years, where your strengths lie – andthis is the most important thing to know. Themethod will show you what you are doing or failingto do that deprives you of the full benefits of yourstrengths. It will show you where you are not partic-ularly competent. And finally, it will show youwhere you have no strengths and cannot perform.

Several implications for action follow from feed-back analysis. First and foremost, concentrate onyour strengths. Put yourself where your strengthscan produce results.

Second, work on improving your strengths.Analysis will rapidly show where you need to im-prove skills or acquire new ones. It will also showthe gaps in your knowledge – and those can usuallybe filled. Mathematicians are born, but everyonecan learn trigonometry.

Third, discover where your intellectual arro-gance is causing disabling ignorance and overcomeit. Far too many people – especially people withgreat expertise in one area – are contemptuous ofknowledge in other areas or believe that beingbright is a substitute for knowledge. First-rate engi-neers, for instance, tend to take pride in not know-ing anything about people. Human beings, they believe, are much too disorderly for the good engi-

neering mind. Human resource pro-fessionals, by contrast, often pridethemselves on their ignorance of ele-mentary accounting or of quantitativemethods altogether. But taking pridein such ignorance is self-defeating. Goto work on acquiring the skills andknowledge you need to fully realizeyour strengths.

It is equally essential to remedyyour bad habits – the things you do or

fail to do that inhibit your effectiveness and per-formance. Such habits will quickly show up in thefeedback. For example, a planner may find that his beautiful plans fail because he does not followthrough on them. Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bull-dozers move mountains; ideas show where thebulldozers should go to work. This planner willhave to learn that the work does not stop when theplan is completed. He must find people to carry outthe plan and explain it to them. He must adapt andchange it as he puts it into action. And finally, hemust decide when to stop pushing the plan.

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managing oneself

To stay mentally alert and engagedduring a 50-year working life, one must know how and when tochange the work one does.

At the same time, feedback will also reveal whenthe problem is a lack of manners. Manners are thelubricating oil of an organization. It is a law of na-ture that two moving bodies in contact with eachother create friction. This is as true for human be-ings as it is for inanimate objects. Manners – simplethings like saying “please” and “thank you” andknowing a person’s name or asking after her fam-ily – enable two people to work together whetherthey like each other or not. Bright people, especiallybright young people, often do not understand this. If analysis shows that someone’s brilliant workfails again and again as soon as cooperation fromothers is required, it probably indi-cates a lack of courtesy – that is, a lackof manners.

Comparing your expectations withyour results also indicates what not todo. We all have a vast number of areasin which we have no talent or skilland little chance of becoming evenmediocre. In those areas a person –and especially a knowledge worker –should not take on work, jobs, and assignments. One should waste as little effort aspossible on improving areas of low competence. Ittakes far more energy and work to improve from in-competence to mediocrity than it takes to improvefrom first-rate performance to excellence. And yetmost people – especially most teachers and most or-ganizations – concentrate on making incompetentperformers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources,and time should go instead to making a competentperson into a star performer.

How Do I Perform?Amazingly few people know how they get thingsdone. Indeed, most of us do not even know that dif-ferent people work and perform differently. Toomany people work in ways that are not their ways,and that almost guarantees nonperformance. Forknowledge workers, How do I perform? may be aneven more important question than What are mystrengths?

Like one’s strengths, how one performs is unique.It is a matter of personality. Whether personality bea matter of nature or nurture, it surely is formedlong before a person goes to work. And how a per-son performs is a given, just as what a person isgood at or not good at is a given. A person’s way ofperforming can be slightly modified, but it is un-likely to be completely changed – and certainly noteasily. Just as people achieve results by doing whatthey are good at, they also achieve results by work-

ing in ways that they best perform. A few commonpersonality traits usually determine how a personperforms.

Am I a reader or a listener? The first thing toknow is whether you are a reader or a listener. Fartoo few people even know that there are readers andlisteners and that people are rarely both. Even fewerknow which of the two they themselves are. Butsome examples will show how damaging such igno-rance can be.

When Dwight Eisenhower was commander inchief of the Allied forces in Europe, he was the dar-ling of the press. His press conferences were famous

for their style – General Eisenhower showed totalcommand of whatever question he was asked, andhe was able to describe a situation and explain apolicy in two or three beautifully polished and ele-gant sentences. Ten years later, the same journal-ists who had been his admirers held PresidentEisenhower in open contempt. He never addressedthe questions, they complained, but rambled onendlessly about something else. And they constantlyridiculed him for butchering the King’s English inincoherent and ungrammatical answers.

Eisenhower apparently did not know that he wasa reader, not a listener. When he was commander in chief in Europe, his aides made sure that everyquestion from the press was presented in writing atleast half an hour before a conference was to begin.And then Eisenhower was in total command. Whenhe became president, he succeeded two listeners,Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Bothmen knew themselves to be listeners and both en-joyed free-for-all press conferences. Eisenhowermay have felt that he had to do what his two prede-cessors had done. As a result, he never even heardthe questions journalists asked. And Eisenhower isnot even an extreme case of a nonlistener.

A few years later, Lyndon Johnson destroyed hispresidency, in large measure, by not knowing thathe was a listener. His predecessor, John Kennedy,was a reader who had assembled a brilliant group of writers as his assistants, making sure that theywrote to him before discussing their memos in per-

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managing oneself

It takes far more energy to improvefrom incompetence to mediocrity

than to improve from first-rateperformance to excellence.

son. Johnson kept these people on his staff – andthey kept on writing. He never, apparently, under-stood one word of what they wrote. Yet as a senator,Johnson had been superb; for parliamentarians haveto be, above all, listeners.

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

How do I learn? The second thing to know abouthow one performs is to know how one learns.Many first-class writers – Winston Churchill is butone example – do poorly in school. They tend to re-member their schooling as pure torture. Yet few oftheir classmates remember it the same way. Theymay not have enjoyed the school very much, butthe worst they suffered was boredom. The explana-tion is that writers do not, as a rule, learn by listen-ing and reading. They learn by writing. Becauseschools do not allow them to learn this way, theyget poor grades.

Schools everywhere are organized on the assump-tion that there is only one right way to learn andthat it is the same way for everybody. But to beforced to learn the way a school teaches is sheer hellfor students who learn differently. Indeed, there areprobably half a dozen different ways to learn.

There are people, like Churchill, who learn bywriting. Some people learn by taking copious notes.

Beethoven, for example, left behind an enormousnumber of sketchbooks, yet he said he never actu-ally looked at them when he composed. Asked whyhe kept them, he is reported to have replied, “If I don’t write it down immediately, I forget it rightaway. If I put it into a sketchbook, I never forget it and I never have to look it up again.” Some peo-ple learn by doing. Others learn by hearing them-selves talk.

A chief executive I know who converted a smalland mediocre family business into the leadingcompany in its industry was one of those peoplewho learn by talking. He was in the habit of call-ing his entire senior staff into his office once a

week and then talking at them for two or threehours. He would raise policy issues and arguethree different positions on each one. He rarelyasked his associates for comments or questions;he simply needed an audience to hear himself talk.That’s how he learned. And although he is a fairlyextreme case, learning through talking is by nomeans an unusual method. Successful trial lawyerslearn the same way, as do many medical diagnosti-cians (and so do I).

Of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, un-derstanding how you learn is the easiest to acquire.When I ask people, “How do you learn?” most ofthem know the answer. But when I ask, “Do youact on this knowledge?” few answer yes. And yet,acting on this knowledge is the key to performance;or rather, not acting on this knowledge condemnsone to nonperformance.

How do I perform? and How do I learn? are thefirst questions to ask. But they are by no means the only ones. To manage yourself effectively, youalso have to ask, Do I work well with people or am I a loner? And if you do work well with people, youthen must ask, In what relationship?

Some people work best as subordinates. GeneralGeorge Patton, the great American military hero ofWorld War II, is a prime example. Patton was Amer-ica’s top troop commander. Yet when he was pro-posed for an independent command, GeneralGeorge Marshall, the U.S. chief of staff – and proba-bly the most successful picker of men in U.S. his-tory – said, “Patton is the best subordinate the Amer-

ican army has ever produced, but hewould be the worst commander.”

Some people work best as teammembers. Others work best alone.Some are exceptionally talented ascoaches and mentors; others are sim-ply incompetent as mentors.

Another crucial question is, Do Iproduce results as a decision maker or

as an adviser? A great many people perform best asadvisers but cannot take the burden and pressure ofmaking the decision. A good many other people, bycontrast, need an adviser to force themselves tothink; then they can make decisions and act onthem with speed, self-confidence, and courage.

This is a reason, by the way, that the number twoperson in an organization often fails when promotedto the number one position. The top spot requires a decision maker. Strong decision makers often put somebody they trust into the number two spotas their adviser – and in that position the person isoutstanding. But in the number one spot, the sameperson fails. He or she knows what the decision

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managing oneself

Do not try to change yourself–youare unlikely to succeed. Work toimprove the way you perform.

should be but cannot accept the responsibility ofactually making it.

Other important questions to ask include, Do I perform well under stress or do I need a highlystructured and predictable environment? Do I workbest in a big organization or a small one? Few peo-ple work well in all kinds of environments. Againand again, I have seen people who were very suc-cessful in large organizations flounder miserablywhen they moved into smaller ones. And the re-verse is equally true.

The conclusion bears repeating: do not try tochange yourself – you are unlikely to succeed. Butwork hard to improve the way you perform. And trynot to take on work you cannot perform or willonly perform poorly.

What Are My Values?To be able to manage yourself, you finally have toask, What are my values? This is not a question ofethics. With respect to ethics, the rules are thesame for everybody, and the test is a simple one. Icall it the “mirror test.”

In the early years of this century, the most highlyrespected diplomat of all the great powers was theGerman ambassador in London. He was clearly des-tined for great things – to become his country’s for-eign minister, at least, if not its federal chancellor.Yet in 1906 he abruptly resigned rather than presideover a dinner given by the diplomatic corps for Edward VII. The king was a notorious womanizerand made it clear what kind of dinner he wanted.The ambassador is reported to have said, “I refuseto see a pimp in the mirror in the morning when I shave.”

That is the mirror test. Ethics requires that youask yourself, What kind of person do I want to seein the mirror in the morning? What is ethical be-havior in one kind of organization or situation isethical behavior in another. But ethics are onlypart of a value system – especially of an organiza-tion’s value system.

To work in an organization whose value systemis unacceptable or incompatible with one’s owncondemns a person both to frustration and to non-performance.

Consider the experience of a highly successfulhuman resources executive whose company wasacquired by a bigger organization. After the acquisi-tion, she was promoted to do the kind of work shedid best, which included selecting people for impor-tant positions. The executive deeply believed that a company should hire people for such positionsfrom the outside only after exhausting all the inside

possibilities. But her new company believed in firstlooking outside “to bring in fresh blood.” There issomething to be said for both approaches – in myexperience, the proper one is to do some of both.They are, however, fundamentally incompatible –not as policies but as values. They bespeak differentviews of the relationship between organizationsand people; different views of the responsibility ofan organization to its people and their develop-ment; and different views of a person’s most impor-tant contribution to an enterprise. After severalyears of frustration, the executive quit – at consid-erable financial loss. Her values and the values ofthe organization simply were not compatible.

Similarly, whether a pharmaceutical companytries to obtain results by making constant, smallimprovements or by achieving occasional, highlyexpensive, and risky “breakthroughs” is not pri-marily an economic question. The results of eitherstrategy may be pretty much the same. At bottom,there is a conflict between a value system that seesthe company’s contribution in terms of helpingphysicians do better what they already do and avalue system that is oriented toward making scien-tific discoveries.

Whether a business should be run for short-termresults or with a focus on the long term is likewise a question of values. Financial analysts believe thatbusinesses can be run for both simultaneously. Suc-cessful businesspeople know better. To be sure,every company has to produce short-term results.But in any conflict between short-term results andlong-term growth, each company will determine itsown priority. This is not primarily a disagreementabout economics. It is fundamentally a value con-flict regarding the function of a business and the re-sponsibility of management.

Value conflicts are not limited to business orga-nizations. One of the fastest-growing pastoralchurches in the United States measures success bythe number of new parishioners. Its leadership be-lieves that what matters is how many newcomersjoin the congregation. The Good Lord will thenminister to their spiritual needs or at least to theneeds of a sufficient percentage. Another pastoral,evangelical church believes that what matters ispeople’s spiritual growth. The church eases outnewcomers who join but do not enter into its spiri-tual life.

Again, this is not a matter of numbers. At firstglance, it appears that the second church growsmore slowly. But it retains a far larger proportion ofnewcomers than the first one does. Its growth, inother words, is more solid. This is also not a theo-logical problem, or only secondarily so. It is a prob-

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lem about values. In a public debate, one pastor ar-gued, “Unless you first come to church, you willnever find the gate to the Kingdom of Heaven.”

“No,” answered the other. “Until you first lookfor the gate to the Kingdom of Heaven, you don’tbelong in church.”

Organizations, like people, have values. To be ef-fective in an organization, a person’s values must becompatible with the organization’s values. They donot need to be the same, but they must be close

enough to coexist. Otherwise, the person will notonly be frustrated but also will not produce results.

A person’s strengths and the way that person per-forms rarely conflict; the two are complementary.But there is sometimes a conflict between a per-son’s values and his or her strengths. What one doeswell – even very well and successfully – may not fitwith one’s value system. In that case, the work maynot appear to be worth devoting one’s life to (oreven a substantial portion thereof).

If I may, allow me to interject a personal note.Many years ago, I too had to decide between my val-ues and what I was doing successfully. I was doingvery well as a young investment banker in Londonin the mid-1930s, and the work clearly fit mystrengths. Yet I did not see myself making a contri-bution as an asset manager. People, I realized, werewhat I valued, and I saw no point in being the rich-est man in the cemetery. I had no money and noother job prospects. Despite the continuing Depres-sion, I quit – and it was the right thing to do. Values,in other words, are and should be the ultimate test.

Where Do I Belong?A small number of people know very early wherethey belong. Mathematicians, musicians, andcooks, for instance, are usually mathematicians,musicians, and cooks by the time they are four orfive years old. Physicians usually decide on their ca-reers in their teens, if not earlier. But most people,especially highly gifted people, do not really knowwhere they belong until they are well past theirmid-twenties. By that time, however, they shouldknow the answers to the three questions: What aremy strengths? How do I perform? and, What are my

values? And then they can and should decide wherethey belong.

Or rather, they should be able to decide wherethey do not belong. The person who has learned thathe or she does not perform well in a big organizationshould have learned to say no to a position in one.The person who has learned that he or she is not adecision maker should have learned to say no to a decision-making assignment. A General Patton(who probably never learned this himself) should

have learned to say no to an independentcommand.

Equally important, knowing the answerto these questions enables a person to say toan opportunity, an offer, or an assignment,“Yes, I will do that. But this is the way Ishould be doing it. This is the way it shouldbe structured. This is the way the relation-ships 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 developwhen people are prepared for opportunities becausethey know their strengths, their method of work,and their values. Knowing where one belongs cantransform an ordinary person – hard-working andcompetent but otherwise mediocre – into an out-standing performer.

What Should I Contribute? Throughout history, the great majority of peoplenever had to ask the question, What should I con-tribute? They were told what to contribute, andtheir tasks were dictated either by the work itself –as it was for the peasant or artisan – or by a masteror a mistress, as it was for domestic servants. Anduntil very recently, it was taken for granted thatmost people were subordinates who did as theywere told. Even in the 1950s and 1960s, the newknowledge workers (the so-called organizationmen) looked to their company’s personnel depart-ment to plan their careers.

Then in the late 1960s, no one wanted to be toldwhat to do any longer. Young men and women be-gan to ask, What do I want to do? And what theyheard was that the way to contribute was to “doyour own thing.” But this solution was as wrong asthe organization men’s had been. Very few of thepeople who believed that doing one’s own thingwould lead to contribution, self-fulfillment, andsuccess achieved any of the three.

But still, there is no return to the old answer ofdoing what you are told or assigned to do. Knowl-edge workers in particular have to learn to ask a

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managing oneself

What one does well–even verywell and successfully–may notfit with one’s value system.

question that has not been asked before: Whatshould my contribution be? To answer it, theymust address three distinct elements: What doesthe situation require? Given my strengths, my wayof performing, and my values, how can I make thegreatest contribution to what needs to be done?And finally, What results have to be achieved tomake a difference?

Consider the experience of a newly appointedhospital administrator. The hospital was big andprestigious, but it had been coasting onits reputation for 30 years. The new ad-ministrator decided that his contribu-tion should be to establish a standard ofexcellence in one important area with-in two years. He chose to focus on theemergency room, which was big, visi-ble, and sloppy. He decided that everypatient who came into the ER had to beseen by a qualified nurse within 60 sec-onds. Within 12 months, the hospital’semergency room had become a modelfor all hospitals in the United States,and within another two years, the wholehospital had been transformed.

As this example suggests, it is rarelypossible – or even particularly fruitful –to look too far ahead. A plan can usuallycover no more than 18 months and stillbe reasonably clear and specific. So thequestion in most cases should be, Whereand how can I achieve results that willmake a difference within the next yearand a half? The answer must balanceseveral things. First, the results shouldbe hard to achieve – they should require“stretching,” to use the current buzz-word. But also, they should be withinreach. To aim at results that cannot beachieved – or that can be only under themost unlikely circumstances – is notbeing ambitious; it is being foolish. Sec-ond, the results should be meaningful.They should make a difference. Finally,results should be visible and, if at allpossible, measurable. From this will come a courseof action: what to do, where and how to start, andwhat goals and deadlines to set.

Responsibility for RelationshipsVery few people work by themselves and achieveresults by themselves – a few great artists, a fewgreat scientists, a few great athletes. Most peoplework with others and are effective with other peo-

ple. That is true whether they are members of an or-ganization or independently employed. Managingyourself requires taking responsibility for relation-ships. This has two parts.

The first is to accept the fact that other peopleare as much individuals as you yourself are. Theyperversely insist on behaving like human beings.This means that they too have their strengths; theytoo have their ways of getting things done; they toohave their values. To be effective, therefore, you

have to know the strengths, the performance modes,and the values of your coworkers.

That sounds obvious, but few people pay atten-tion to it. Typical is the person who was trained towrite reports in his or her first assignment becausethat boss was a reader. Even if the next boss is a lis-tener, the person goes on writing reports that, in-variably, produce no results. Invariably the bosswill think the employee is stupid, incompetent,and lazy, and he or she will fail. But that could have

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managing oneself

Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person – hard-working but otherwise mediocre – into an outstanding performer.

been avoided if the employee had only looked at thenew boss and analyzed how this boss performs.

Bosses are neither a title on the organizationchart nor a “function.” They are individuals and areentitled to do their work in the way they do it best.It is incumbent on the people who work with themto observe them, to find out how they work, and toadapt themselves to what makes their bosses mosteffective. This, in fact, is the secret of “managing”the boss.

The same holds true for all your coworkers. Eachworks his or her way, not your way. And each is en-titled to work in his or her way. What matters iswhether they perform and what their values are. Asfor how they perform – each is likely to do it differ-ently. The first secret of effectiveness is to under-stand the people you work with and depend on sothat you can make use of their strengths, their ways of working, and their values. Working rela-tionships are as much based on the people as theyare on the work.

The second part of relationship responsibility istaking responsibility for communication. WheneverI, or any other consultant, start to work with an or-ganization, the first thing I hear about are all the per-sonality conflicts. Most of these arise from the factthat people do not know what other people are doingand how they do their work, or what contributionthe other people are concentrating on and what re-sults they expect. And the reason they do not knowis that they have not asked and therefore have notbeen told.

This failure to ask reflects human stupidity lessthan it reflects human history. Until recently, itwas unnecessary to tell any of these things to any-body. In the medieval city, everyone in a districtplied the same trade. In the countryside, everyonein a valley planted the same crop as soon as the frost was out of the ground. Even those few peoplewho did things that were not “common” workedalone, so they did not have to tell anyone what theywere doing.

Today the great majority of people work withothers who have different tasks and responsibili-ties. The marketing vice president may have comeout of sales and know everything about sales, butshe knows nothing about the things she has neverdone – pricing, advertising, packaging, and the like.So the people who do these things must make surethat the marketing vice president understandswhat they are trying to do, why they are trying to do it, how they are going to do it, and what resultsto expect.

If the marketing vice president does not under-stand what these high-grade knowledge specialists

are doing, it is primarily their fault, not hers. Theyhave not educated her. Conversely, it is the market-ing vice president’s responsibility to make sure thatall of her coworkers understand how she looks atmarketing: what her goals are, how she works, andwhat she expects of herself and of each one of them.

Even people who understand the importance oftaking responsibility for relationships often do notcommunicate sufficiently with their associates.They are afraid of being thought presumptuous orinquisitive or stupid. They are wrong. Wheneversomeone goes to his or her associates and says,“This is what I am good at. This is how I work.These are my values. This is the contribution I planto concentrate on and the results I should be ex-pected to deliver,” the response is always, “This ismost helpful. But why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

And one gets the same reaction – without excep-tion, in my experience – if one continues by asking,“And what do I need to know about your strengths,how you perform, your values, and your proposedcontribution?” In fact, knowledge workers shouldrequest this of everyone with whom they work,whether as subordinate, superior, colleague, or teammember. And again, whenever this is done, the re-action is always, “Thanks for asking me. But whydidn’t you ask me earlier?”

Organizations are no longer built on force but ontrust. The existence of trust between people doesnot necessarily mean that they like one another. It means that they understand one another. Takingresponsibility for relationships is therefore an ab-solute necessity. It is a duty. Whether one is a mem-ber of the organization, a consultant to it, a supplier,or a distributor, one owes that responsibility to allone’s coworkers: those whose work one depends onas well as those who depend on one’s own work.

The Second Half of Your LifeWhen 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 tosurvive 40 years of hard work in the mill or on therailroad, you were quite happy to spend the rest of your life doing nothing. Today, however, most work is knowledge work, and knowledge workersare not “finished” after 40 years on the job, they aremerely bored.

We hear a great deal of talk about the midlife cri-sis of the executive. It is mostly boredom. At 45,most executives have reached the peak of theirbusiness careers, and they know it. After 20 years ofdoing very much the same kind of work, they are

72 harvard business review March–April 1999

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very good at their jobs. But they are not learning or contributing or deriving challenge and satisfac-tion from the job. And yet they are still likely toface another 20 if not 25 years of work. That is whymanaging oneself increasingly leads one to begin asecond career.

There are three ways to develop a second career.The first is actually to start one. Often this takesnothing more than moving from one kind of orga-nization to another: the divisional controller in alarge corporation, for instance, becomes the con-troller of a medium-sized hospital. But there arealso growing numbers of people who move into different lines of work altogether: the businessexecutive or government official who enters theministry at 45, for instance; or the midlevel managerwho leaves corporate life after 20 years to attend law school and become a small-town attorney.

We will see many more second careers under-taken by people who have achieved modest successin their first jobs. Such people have substantialskills, and they know how to work. They need acommunity – the house is empty with the childrengone – and they need income as well. But above all,they need challenge.

The second way to prepare for the second half ofyour life is to develop a parallel career. Many peoplewho are very successful in their first careers stay inthe work they have been doing, either on a full-timeor a part-time or consulting basis. But in addition,they create a parallel job, usually in a nonprofit or-ganization, that takes another ten hours of work aweek. They might take over the administration oftheir church, for instance, or the presidency of thelocal Girl Scouts Council. They mightrun the battered women’s shelter,work as a children’s librarian for thelocal public library, sit on the schoolboard, and so on.

Finally, there are the social entre-preneurs. These are usually peoplewho have been very successful in theirfirst careers. They love their work, butit no longer challenges them. In manycases they keep on doing what theyhave been doing all along but spend less and less oftheir time on it. They also start another activity,usually a nonprofit. My friend Bob Buford, for exam-ple, built a very successful television company thathe still runs. But he has also founded and built a suc-cessful nonprofit organization that works withProtestant churches, and he is building another toteach social entrepreneurs how to manage their ownnonprofit ventures while still running their originalbusinesses.

People who manage the second half of their livesmay always be a minority. The majority may “retireon the job” and count the years until their actual retirement. But it is this minority, the men andwomen who see a long working-life expectancy asan opportunity both for themselves and for society,who will become leaders and models.

There is one prerequisite for managing the sec-ond half of your life: you must begin long before youenter it. When it first became clear 30 years ago thatworking-life expectancies were lengthening veryfast, many observers (including myself) believedthat retired people would increasingly become vol-unteers for nonprofit institutions. That has nothappened. If one does not begin to volunteer beforeone is 40 or so, one will not volunteer once past 60.

Similarly, all the social entrepreneurs I know be-gan to work in their chosen second enterprise longbefore they reached their peak in their original busi-ness. Consider the example of a successful lawyer,the legal counsel to a large corporation, who hasstarted a venture to establish model schools in hisstate. He began to do volunteer legal work for theschools when he was around 35. He was elected tothe school board at age 40. At age 50, when he hadamassed a fortune, he started his own enterprise tobuild and to run model schools. He is, however,still working nearly full-time as the lead counsel inthe company he helped found as a young lawyer.

There is another reason to develop a second ma-jor interest, and to develop it early. No one can ex-pect to live very long without experiencing a seri-ous setback in his or her life or work. There is thecompetent engineer who is passed over for promo-

tion at age 45. There is the competent college pro-fessor who realizes at age 42 that she will never geta professorship at a big university, even though shemay be fully qualified for it. There are tragedies inone’s family life: the breakup of one’s marriage orthe loss of a child. At such times, a second major interest – not just a hobby – may make all the differ-ence. The engineer, for example, now knows thathe has not been very successful in his job. But in hisoutside activity – as church treasurer, for example –

harvard business review March–April 1999 73

managing oneself

There is one prerequisite formanaging the second half of your

life: you must begin doing so long before you enter it.

he is a success. One’s family may break up, but inthat outside activity there is still a community.

In a society in which success has become so terri-bly important, having options will become increas-ingly vital. Historically, there was no such thing as“success.” The overwhelming majority of peopledid not expect anything but to stay in their “properstation,” as an old English prayer has it. The onlymobility was downward mobility.

In a knowledge society, however, we expect every-one to be a success. This is clearly an impossibility.For a great many people, there is at best an absenceof failure. Wherever there is success, there has to befailure. And then it is vitally important for the indi-vidual, and equally for the individual’s family, tohave an area in which he or she can contribute,make a difference, and be somebody. That meansfinding a second area – whether in a second career, a parallel career, or a social venture – that offers anopportunity for being a leader, for being respected,for being a success.

The challenges of managing oneself may seemobvious, if not elementary. And the answers mayseem self-evident to the point of appearing naïve.But managing oneself requires new and unprece-dented things from the individual, and especiallyfrom the knowledge worker. In effect, managing one-self demands that each knowledge worker thinkand behave like a chief executive officer. Further,the shift from manual workers who do as they aretold to knowledge workers who have to managethemselves profoundly challenges social structure.Every existing society, even the most individualis-tic one, takes two things for granted, if only subcon-sciously: that organizations outlive workers, andthat most people stay put.

But today the opposite is true. Knowledge work-ers outlive organizations, and they are mobile. Theneed to manage oneself is therefore creating a revo-lution in human affairs.

Product no. 4444 To place an order, call 1-800-988-0886.

74 harvard business review March–April 1999

managing oneself

ARTICLES

“Job Sculpting: The Art of Retaining YourBest People” by Timothy Butler and JamesWaldroop (Harvard Business Review, Septem-ber–October 1999, Product no. 4282)

Drucker emphasizes the work each individual

must do in managing her career. This article

highlights the manager’s role in helping their

best employees create more rewarding jobs.

Many managers, Butler and Waldroop con-

tend, harbor the mistaken belief that people

who excel at their work are necessarily happy

in their jobs. They also tend to be surprised

when these star performers leave, and to

believe there is nothing they can do to pre-

vent such departures. Managers must learn

to look beneath the good performance to

understand their employees’ deeply embed-

ded life interests. These are not hobbies, but

emotionally driven passions for certain kinds

of activities. People with a life interest in

application of technology, for example, are

intrigued by the inner workings of things;

they like to take things apart and learn how

they function. The authors identify eight

basic life interests. Once managers have done

some probing to uncover employees’ deeply

embedded life interests, they are often sur-

prised by the range of options that exist for

creating a better alignment between jobs and

life interests.

“The Post-Capitalist Executive: An Interviewwith Peter F. Drucker” by Peter F. Drucker andT George Harris (Harvard Business Review,May–June 1993, Product no. 93302)

In this article, Drucker explores the impor-

tance of self-management in the world of

work. Corporations once built to last like pyr-

amids are now more like tents, he says, so

individuals need to take responsibility for

their own careers. Instead of assuming a tra-

ditional career trajectory up the corporate

ladder, they should be thinking in terms of a

succession of professional assignments or

projects. Competence is now measured less in

terms of subject matter and more in terms of

abilities—for example, empathy and stamina

under pressure. So it’s up to the individual to

help others understand they’re able to con-

tribute to the overall project. It’s a changed

world for managers, too, Drucker adds. You

no longer manage a workforce, you manage

individuals with a variety of skills, and these

skills can be put together in a variety of com-

binations.

Managing OneselfE X P L O R I N G F U R T H E R . . .

H A R V A R D B U S I N E S S S C H O O L P U B L I S H I N G

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