Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves—their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.
Peter Drucker
In this post, we’ll explore Managing Oneself1, an article by Peter Drucker that highlights how to leverage your strengths in the 21st-century knowledge economy. This summary distills key insights on understanding and utilizing your strengths to succeed in today’s knowledge-driven world.
Key Questions for Self-Management
1. What Are My Strengths?
- Focus on leveraging your strengths.
- Continuously improve and build on them.
- Identify areas where intellectual arrogance causes ignorance—and work to correct it.
- Remedy bad habits that hinder your growth.
- Cultivate courtesy and manners (e.g., saying “please” and “thank you”).
- Avoid wasting effort on improving areas of low competence.
2. How Do I Perform?
- Are you a reader or a listener?
- Example: Dwight D. Eisenhower was a reader, not a listener.
- How do you learn?
- Examples:
- Winston Churchill and Beethoven learned by writing.
- General George Patton excelled as a subordinate but was a poor commander.
- Examples:
- What work environment suits you?
- Team player, independent worker, or mentee?
- Can you thrive under mentors, or do they inhibit your growth?
- How do you produce results?
- As a decision-maker or as an adviser?
3. What Are My Values?
- Use the Mirror Test: Are you proud of the person you see in the mirror?
- Misalignment between your values and your organization’s value system leads to frustration and poor performance.
- Ultimately, values are the truest test of compatibility and fulfillment.
4. Where Do I Belong?
- Identify where you don’t belong.
- Successful careers evolve when people prepare for opportunities by understanding their strengths, work methods, and values.
5. What Should I Contribute?
- Take responsibility for your relationships:
- Recognize that others are as individual as you.
- Ensure clear communication and mutual understanding.
- Build organizations on trust, not force.
Planning for the Second Half of Life
Three Approaches to the Second Half of Your Career:
- Start a Second Career
- Pursue a Parallel Career
- Become a Social Entrepreneur
Key Principles:
- Everyone should cultivate an area where they can make a meaningful contribution and “be somebody.”
- Begin planning long before entering your second career.
- Develop a secondary interest early on—it serves as a backup during setbacks in your primary career.
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