PDF Summary:Managing Oneself, by Peter F. Drucker
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1-Page PDF Summary of Managing Oneself
How can you build a successful career in which you collect accolades and achievements throughout your working life? Peter Drucker, the creator of many influential management theories, answers this difficult question in this compact careers manual. He believes the secret to success lies in managing yourself, acting as your own CEO, and maneuvering yourself into situations where you’ll thrive.
Managing Oneself will teach you how to identify your strengths, shine light on your inner values, and position yourself in a job where you’ll manage your own boss. Drucker rounds off his book by laying out how to have a second career that’s even better than your first. Our guide compares Drucker’s approach to other modern career advice and adds practical steps to help you apply his methods to your job.
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For example, Cal Newport, author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You, suggests that it’s important to feel like you’re competent at your work, which can stem from choosing to do what you’re good at: in other words, playing to your strengths. Competence is important because it’s a pillar of the principle of self-determination, which is the intrinsic motivation you feel to perform well. In turn, self-determination brings a sense of job satisfaction. Therefore, if you play to your strengths and thus feel like you’re competent at your job, your sense of job satisfaction will naturally increase.
How to Identify Your Strengths
To work from your strengths, you must first identify them. Drucker outlines a strength identification method that we’ll call the future predictions technique. He asks you to write down a prediction of what you think will happen every time you’re at a significant crossroads in your professional life and have to decide on a course of action. At the end of each prediction’s time period, go back and evaluate how accurate your assumptions were. Drucker’s suggested time window for predictions is nine to 12 months.
How Does the Future Predictions Technique Work?
Drucker doesn’t explain exactly why he believes this technique to be so successful at predicting your areas of strength. To link the technique to your strengths, when you’re reflecting on the last nine to 12 months, frame your analysis around what went well and what didn’t go so well. Then, use this to infer your strengths, presuming that your successes were thanks to your strengths.
Use Goals to Excel in Your Role
Now that you know your strengths, you’re ready to answer the question, “How can I excel in my current role?” Drucker says that you excel by making a notable difference to your workplace, using your strengths. Do this by setting a work-related target and then working backward to make a step-by-step plan for achieving it. Achieving these targets will help you proactively advance your career, which is an important aspect of self-management.
Setting SMART Targets
Drucker’s advice on targets is similar to the “SMART” target model outlined by George Doran. Doran said that every target should be:
Specific: The target should clearly identify a desired outcome.
Measurable: The results should be easily measurable.
Assignable: The tasks needed to achieve the target should be assigned to specific people.
Realistic: The target should be achievable within the current circumstances.
Time-bound: There should be a clear timeline for all steps of the target.
Doran found that adding “SMART” aspects to targets makes it more likely that you’ll achieve them.
Doran’s technique works for targets set by anyone for anyone, as they’re assignable. On the other hand, Drucker is more interested in ambitious targets that you set only for yourself—in other words, the type of targets that keep you focused on your own path and career advancement.
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PDF Summary Shortform Introduction
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President George W. Bush awarded Drucker the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002 for his contributions to management theory. He also received a medal for services to the Republic of Austria, and Japan made him a member of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, an award the emperor gives to significant contributors to an important field. Drucker’s obituary in the New York Times noted that his ideas on management were so influential that a comment from him could change the way top corporate leaders operated.
The Book’s Publication
Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, 2008.
This summary is based on the 2008 version of Managing Oneself. The piece was originally published as an article in 1999, which was rerun in the Harvard Business Review in 2005. It was then published as a book in the Harvard Business Review Classics series.
Many of Drucker’s other works focus on improving management techniques. This makes Managing Oneself an unusual addition to the canon of Drucker’s work as in this...
PDF Summary Chapter 1: Defining Self-Management
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Other authors also add an emotional component to self-management. In Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradbury defines self-management as the ability to use self-awareness to manage your emotions. This means acting on rational thoughts to avoid being controlled by emotion and using positive self-talk. Bradbury also ties self-management to support systems, encouraging you to publicize your goals so that others can hold you accountable and support you.
Why Is It Necessary to Manage Yourself?
Drucker believes self-management is necessary because our working lives have changed drastically. We are now in the era of the “knowledge worker,” which has altered the kind of work we do.
Knowledge working means that now we can make choices about our working lives, and Drucker asserts that making good choices is necessary to having a successful career. As a knowledge worker, you can, for instance, choose where you work, and for how long you work there, unlike in the past, when workers had one career path for life. As you are likely to be the only constant factor throughout your career, you must...
PDF Summary Chapter 2: How You Can Begin to Manage Yourself
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Reflecting on Your Strengths
The first stage of self-reflection is thinking about your strengths. Drucker states that this is necessary to success because working on your strengths is the most efficient, and thus best, way to make yourself stand out and advance your career. It doesn’t take much effort to improve something you have a natural ability in, and this effort could turn you into an exceptional performer. Conversely, it would take a good deal of effort to work on areas in which you’re less skilled, and the results would be less impressive—taking you from poor to mediocre.
For example, if you’re already disposed to public speaking, you just need to polish these skills to be a great presenter, and this could open many doors for you. On the other hand, if you’re terrible with spreadsheets, it would take a long time to learn how to get better, and that effort would translate into only a moderate level of proficiency.
The Importance of Working From Your Strengths
Drucker’s advice to work on the things you’re already good at may seem counterintuitive, because you might assume that it’s important to focus on improving areas of weakness. However,...
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Learn more about our summaries →PDF Summary Chapter 3: How to Put Self-Reflection Into Action
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Setting SMART Targets
Drucker’s advice on targets and his specific ideas around what kind of target to set are similar to the “SMART” target model outlined by George Doran. Doran said that every target should be:
Specific: The target should clearly identify a desired outcome.
Measurable: The results should be easily measurable.
Assignable: The tasks needed to achieve the target should be assigned to specific people.
Realistic: The target should be achievable within the current circumstances.
Time-bound: There should be a clear timeline for all steps of the target.
Doran found that adding the “SMART” aspects to the targets made it more likely that the target would be achieved.
The SMART target method and Drucker’s guide for target setting both agree that targets should be specific, measurable, and time-bound. However, the techniques differ in that Doran’s SMART targets technique works for targets set by anyone for anyone, as they are assignable, whereas Drucker’s targets are ones that you set...
PDF Summary Chapter 4: Your Second Career
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Second, it can give you another pathway to success. In today’s knowledge economy, Drucker underlines, we increasingly judge people by their achievements. If your first career hasn’t been successful, having a backup option presents a new opportunity to achieve.
Further Advantages of a Second Career
Drucker’s last reason to consider a second career—that it will help you be seen as successful—is one that relies heavily on the notion that you can only succeed through your career, rather than in other areas of your life. It also assumes that a career is something you can either “succeed” or “fail” at, which is quite an extreme view of careers as a whole.
Regardless, there are reasons why a second career may be beneficial, including the possibility of a fresh start as Drucker suggests. Other reasons include that a second career is possibly more adapted to the current job market. Furthermore, a second career gives you the opportunity to pursue a role that you’re actually interested in. Your first career may have been dictated by financial constraints or family...
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