Managing Yourself: Advice from the Great Peter Drucker

How can you manage anyone else if you aren’t good at managing yourself?

As management guru Peter Drucker says in his famous Harvard Business Review article Managing Oneself, “History’s great achievers—a Napoleon, a da Vinci, a Mozart—have always managed themselves. That, in large measure, is what makes them great achievers.” ¹ 

If those rare human exceptions he mentioned were good at managing themselves, it stands to reason that the rest of us, with our modest endowments, may want to learn a bit more about managing ourselves as well.

And who better to show us the way than Drucker…

…who was known as the father of modern management. Throughout the article, Drucker asks a bunch of probing questions that can help us all be better chief executive officers of our own lives, which in turn will help us do a better job of leading others.

The questions we review from Drucker’s article today will cover everything from understanding your strengths to understanding your values to understanding where you belong, or where you don’t belong!

Speaking of understanding where you don’t belong, I would like to add one more name to the list of distinguished people in the opening paragraph…Mr. Stephen Pollard!  You are probably asking yourself, “who the hell is Stephen Pollard?” and justifiably so! Let me just say, he is someone who was also good at managing himself! More on his story in a bit…

Now on to the questions from Peter Drucker that you can use for managing yourself:

5 Questions for Managing Yourself…

(1)  What Are My Strengths?

Drucker suggests that people can perform only based upon their strengths, not their weaknesses. However, he suggests that most of us truly don’t know what we are good at.

Make it actionable: His suggestion is that whenever you take an action or decision to write down what you think will happen. Then in 9-12 months, revisit it and compare it with the results. If you follow this feedback analysis practice, you will soon realize where your strengths lie, where you aren’t that competent and where you are incompetent

The implications for the feedback analysis are as follows:

  Focus on your strengths and putting yourself in situations to leverage them.

  Keep improving on your strengths – filling in gaps in knowledge, for example.

  Remedy your bad habits or things that inhibit your performance.

  Understand what NOT to do, there are things we all suck at and have little chance of being even mediocre at. Don’t waste your time on these things.

(2)  How Do I Perform?

According to Drucker: “Just as people achieve results by doing what they are good at, they also achieve results by working in ways that they best perform. A few common personality traits usually determine how a person performs.” ¹

He then went on to ask two sub-questions that you can use when managing yourself to figure out how you best perform:

Am I a Reader or a Listener?

Most of us are either readers or listeners, but rarely both. And many of us don’t know which one we are. Drucker told a great story of how General Eisenhower was lauded by the press for being able to succinctly answer any question thrown at him by the press. However, only 10 years later, President Eisenhower was lamented by the same press for rambling and not answering their questions. The difference? He didn’t know he was a reader! When he was a General, his aides presented the questions from the press to him in writing half an hour prior to the press conference. As President, he succeeded two Presidents (Roosevelt and Truman) who were listeners and kept their free for all press conferences. This resulted in him not hearing what the press asked.

Make it actionable: As Drucker says, “Few listeners can be made, or can make themselves, into competent readers—and vice versa.” ¹ So, understand whether you are a reader or listener and use it to manage yourself.

How Do I Learn?

We all learn differently. Some of us learn best by writing, some by talking, some by listening, some by writing, some by doing, and some by watching.          

 Make it actionable:  Out of all the important pieces of managing yourself, this may be the easiest one to acquire. Most of us know the answer to how we learn best. The problem is…most of us don’t act on it. As Drucker advises, “…acting on this knowledge is the key to performance, or rather, not acting on this knowledge condemns one to nonperformance.” ¹

(3)  What Are My Values?

This one is about understanding your values and making sure you work in an organization whose values are compatible with yours. They don’t have to be an exact match, but they do need to be close enough so you can coexist. If not, you will end up frustrated and unproductive.

For example, values can manifest themselves in terms of businesses focusing on short-term vs. long-term results. The business may prioritize short-term results and you may value long-term growth, which may cause you great frustration.

Make it actionable:  Understand the values of the organization before you start a new job and make sure they are compatible with yours. If you are feeling extremely frustrated, it could be that your values are incompatible with the organizations and it may be time to look for something else.

(4)  Where Do I Belong?

After answering the first three questions (What are my strengths? How do I perform? What are my values?) you can then decide where you belong. Or, conversely, where you don’t belong! Knowing where you belong, based on the answers to the first three questions can take you from being an average performer to an outstanding one!

Make it actionable:  When you are presented with an opportunity, offer or assignment, knowing the answers to the first 3 questions can help you decide whether to accept it or not. It can also help you figure out how you should be doing it and how it may be structured for everyone’s benefit.

 (5)  What Should I Contribute? 

Drucker posits that nowadays, some of us have a choice in what we do, and it is up to us to help figure out how we can best contribute. To do that the question we need to ask is, “what should my contribution be?”.

Make it actionable:  And to answer it, he suggests we need to address the following three elements:

  What is the situation calling for?

  Knowing my strengths, the way I perform and my values – how can I best contribute to what needs to be done?

  What are the results that need to be achieved to create an impact?

Now that we have covered Drucker’s advice for managing yourself, you probably asking…

“Who the Hell is Stephen Pollard?”

Well, Pollard was a British journalist with the Daily Express who was frustrated with being told by his bosses to produce a steady stream of celebrity smut and low-brow news. So, ultimately, he gave notice to the Daily Express and signed on with The Times of London. Clearly, his values were incompatible with theirs – managing yourself was something he was adept at.

Here is the entertaining part, in his last column, he wrote an article which seemed to be a boring opinion piece on the advantages of organic agriculture. The column started like this, “Farmers are hardly the most popular group in Britain. Up and down the country areas are blighted by intensive farming practices. Couple this with subsidies the like of which no other industry can dream of and you have a recipe for unpopularity.” ²

Now, if you look a little closer

You will see that the first letter of each sentence starts to spell out a vulgar word. He continued his coding throughout the rest of the article which resulted in the following message to his old boss, “F— you, Desmond”

Were he alive today, Drucker would probably give Pollard an A+ for leaving the Daily Express due to the fact that his values were incompatible with theirs.

On the other hand, he would probably give him an F for not doing a good job of making sure his values were compatible with those of The London Times.

You see, his new boss at The London Times didn’t think his final column at the Daily Express was very funny and rescinded Pollard’s offer of employment…

Until next time, keep managing yourself and as always…PYMFP!

–Rick

Use It or Lose It – Managing Yourself

Drucker’s questions that you can ask when managing yourself are:

(1)  What are my strengths?
(2)  How do I perform? (am I a reader or a listener? how do I learn?)
(3)  What are my values?
(4)  Where do I belong?
(5)  What should I contribute?

When to Use It:

You need to be good at managing yourself before you try to manage anyone else!

What Do You Think?

Are you good at managing yourself? Do you use any of Drucker’s questions for managing yourself? Do you have any other questions to guide you when managing yourself? Please share in the comments below!

If you enjoyed this post, it would mean the world to us if you shared it with people you care about via any of the social media platforms below!

Popular Previous Posts:

Mentally Strong People Don’t Do These 13 Things!
The Bystander Effect: So…What Would You Do?
Lessons from Tuesdays with Morrie That Will Make You Think
SCARF Model: This is How to Tighten Up Your Collaborations!

References

¹ Drucker. (2008). Managing Oneself: /Peter F. Drucker. USA: Havard Business School. 2 https://money.howstuffworks.com/10-best-resignations2.htm