Managing Oneself (Part 2)
Peter F. Drucker
“Where do I belong? What is my contribution?”
“Organizations are no longer built on force. They are increasingly built on trust. Trust does not mean that people like one another. It means that people can trust one another. And this pre-supposes that people understand one another. Taking relation-ship responsibility is therefore an absolute necessity”
Where Do I Belong
The answers to the three questions: “What are my strengths? How do I perform? What are my values?” should enable the individual, and especially the individual knowledge worker, to decide where he or she belongs.
This is not a decision that most people can or should make at the beginning of their careers.
To be sure, a small minority know very early where they belong. Mathematicians, musicians or cooks, for instance, are usually mathematicians, musicians or cooks by the time they are four or five years old. Physicians usually decide in their teens, if not earlier. But most people, and especially highly gifted people, do not really know where they belong till they are well past their mid-twenties. By that time, how-ever, they should know where their strengths are. They should know how they perform. And they should know what their values are.
And then they can and should decide where they belong. Or rather, they should be able to decide where they do not belong. The person who has learned that he or she does not really perform in a big organization should have learned to say “no” when offered a position in a big organization. The person who has learned that he or she is not a decision maker should have learned to say “no” when offered a decision-making assignment. A General Patton (who probably himself never learned it) should have learned to say “no” when offered an independent command, rather than a position as a high-level subordinate.
But also knowing the answer to these three questions enables people to say to an opportunity, to an offer, to an assignment: “Yes, I’ll do that. But this is the way I should be doing it. This is the way it should be structured. This is the way my relationships 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 are the careers of people who are prepared for the opportunity because they know their strengths, the way they work and their values.
For knowing where one belongs makes ordinary people—hardworking, competent but mediocre otherwise—into outstanding performers.
they know their strengths, the way they work and their values
What Is My Contribution
To ask “What is my contribution?” means moving from knowledge to action.
The question is not: “What do I want to con-tribute?” It is not: “What am I told to contribute?” It is: “What should I contribute?”
This is a new question in human history. Traditionally, the task was given. It was given either by the work itself—as was the task of the peasant or the artisan. Or it was given by a master or a mistress, as was the task of the domestic servant. And, until very recently, it was taken for granted that most people were subordinates who did as they were told.
The advent of the knowledge worker is changing this, and fast. The first reaction to this change was to look at the employing organization to give the answer.
“Career Planning” is what the Personnel Department—especially of the large organization—was supposed to do in the 1950s and 1960s, for the “Organization Man,” the new knowledge worker employee. In Japan it is still the way knowledge workers are being managed. But even in Japan the knowledge worker can increasingly expect to outlive the employing organization.
Except in Japan, however, the “Organization Man” and the career-planning Personnel Department have long become history. And with them disappeared the notion that anyone but oneself can—or should—be the “career planner.” The reaction in the sixties was for knowledge people to ask: “What do I want to do?” People were told that “to do one’s own thing” was the way to contribute. This was, for instance, what the “student rebellion” of 1968 believed.
We soon found out, however, that it was as wrong an answer as was the Organization Man. Very few of the people who believed that “doing one’s own thing” leads to contribution, to self-fulfillment or to success achieved any of the three.
But still, there is no return to the old answer, that is, to do what you are being told, or what you are being assigned to Knowledge workers, in particular, will have to learn to ask:
“What should MY contribution be?”
Only then should they ask:
“Does this fit my strengths? Is this what I want to do?” And “Do I find this rewarding and stimulating?”
The best example I know of is the way Harry Truman repositioned himself when he became President of the United States, upon the sudden death of Franklin D. Roosevelt at the end of World War II. Truman had been picked for the Vice Presidency because he was totally concerned with domestic issues. For it was then generally believed that with the end of the war—and the end was clearly in sight—the U.S. would return to almost exclusive concern with domestic affairs. Truman had never shown the slightest interest in foreign affairs, knew nothing about them, and was kept in total ignorance of them. He was still totally focused on domestic affairs when, within a few weeks after his ascendancy, he went to the Potsdam Conference after Germany surrendered.
There he sat for a week, with Churchill on one side and Stalin on the other, and realized, to his horror, that foreign affairs would dominate, but also that he knew absolutely nothing about them. He came back from Potsdam convinced that he had to give up what he wanted to do and instead had to concentrate on what he had to do, that is, on foreign affairs. He immediately—as already mentioned—put himself into school with General Marshall and Dean Acheson as his tutors. Within in a few months he was a master of foreign affairs and he, rather than Churchill or Stalin, created the postwar world—with his policy of containing Communism and pushing it back from Iran and Greece; with the Marshall Plan that rescued Western Europe; with the decision to rebuild Japan; and finally, with the call for worldwide economic development.
By contrast, Lyndon Johnson lost both the Vietnam War and his domestic policies because he clung to “What do I want to do?” instead of asking himself “What should my contribution be?”
Johnson, like Truman, had been entirely focused on domes-tic affairs. He too came into the Presidency wanting to complete what the New Deal had left unfinished. He very soon realized that the Vietnam War was what he had to concentrate on. But he could not give up what he wanted his contribution to be. He splintered himself between the Vietnam War and domestic reforms—and he lost both.
One more question has to be asked to decide “What should I contribute?”: “Where and how can I have results that make a difference?”
The answer to this question has to balance a number of things. Results should be hard to achieve. They should require “stretching,” to use the present buzzword. But they should be within reach. To aim at results that cannot be achieved—or can be achieved only under the most unlikely circumstances—is not being “ambitious.” It is being foolish. At the same time, results should be meaningful. They should make a difference. And they should be visible and, if at all possible, measurable.
Here is one example from a nonprofit institution.
A newly appointed hospital administrator asked himself the question “What should be my contribution?” The hospital was big and highly prestigious. But it had been coasting on its reputation for thirty years and had become mediocre. The new hospital administrator decided that his contribution should be to establish a standard of excellence in one important area within two years. And so he decided to concentrate on turning around the Emergency Room and the Trauma Center—both big, visible and sloppy. The new hospital administrator thought through what to demand of an Emergency Room, and how to measure its performance. He decided that every patient who came into the Emergency Room had to be seen by a qualified nurse within sixty seconds. Within twelve months that hospital’s Emergency Room had become a model for the entire United States. And its turn-around also showed that there can be standards, discipline, measurements in a hospital—and within another two years the whole hospital had been transformed.
The decision “What should my contribution be?” thus balances three elements.
1. “What does the situation require?”
2. “How could I make the greatest contribution with my strengths, my way of performing, my values, to what needs to be done?”
3. “What results have to be achieved to make a difference?”
This then leads to the action conclusions: what to do, where to start, how to start, what goals and deadlines to set.
Throughout history, few people had any choices. The task was imposed on them either by nature or by a master. And so, in large measure, was the way in which they were supposed to perform the task. But so also were the expected results—they were given. To
“do one’s own thing” is, however, not freedom. It is license.
It does not have results. It does not contribute.
But to start out with the question “What should I contribute?” gives freedom. It gives freedom because it gives responsibility.
Relationship Responsibility
Very few people work by themselves and achieve results by themselves—a few great artists, a few great scientists, a few great athletes. Most people work with other people and are effective through other people. That is true whether they are members of an organization or legally independent. To manage oneself, therefore, requires taking relationship responsibility.
There are two parts to it.
The first one is to accept the fact that other people are as much individuals as one is oneself.
They insist on behaving like human beings. This means that they too have their strengths. It means that they too have their ways of getting things done. It means that they too have their values. To be effective, one there-fore has to know the strengths, the performance modes and the values of the people one works with.
This sounds obvious. But few people pay attention to it.
Typical are people who, in their first assignment, worked for a man who is a reader. They therefore were trained in writing reports. Their next boss is a listener. But these people keep on writing reports to the new boss—the way President Johnson’s assistants kept on writing reports to him because Jack Kennedy, who had hired them, had been a reader. Invariably, these people have no results. Invariably, their new boss thinks they are stupid, incompetent, lazy. They become failures. All that would have been needed to avoid this would have been one look at the boss and ask the question: “How does he or she perform?”
Bosses are not a title on the organization chart or a “function.” They are individuals and entitled to do the work the way they do it. And it is incumbent on the people who work with them to observe them, to find out how they work and to adapt them-selves to the way the bosses are effective.
There are bosses, for instance, who have to see the figures first Alfred Sloan at General Motors was one of them. He himself was not a financial person but an engineer with strong marketing instincts. But as an engineer he had been trained to look first at figures.
Three of the ablest younger executives in General Motors did not make it into the top ranks because they did not look at Sloan—they did not realize that there was no point writing to him or talking to him until he first had spent time with the figures. They went in and presented their reports. Then they left the figures. But by that time they had lost Sloan.
As said before, readers are unlikely ever to become listeners, and listeners are unlikely ever to become readers. But everyone can learn to make a decent oral presentation or to write a decent report. It is simply the duty of the subordinate to enable the boss to do his or her work. And that requires looking at the boss and asking
to accept the fact that other people are as much individuals as one is oneself
“What are his or her strengths? How does he or she do the work and perform? What are his or her values?” In fact, this is the secret of “managing” the boss.
One does the same with all the people one works with. Each of them works his other way and not my way. And each of them is entitled to work in his or her way. What matters is whether they perform, and what their values are. How they perform—each is likely to do it differently.
The first secret of effectiveness is to understand the people with whom one works and on whom one depends, and to make use of their strengths, their ways of working, their values.
For working relations are as much based on the per-son as they are based on the work.
The second thing to do to manage oneself and to become effective is to take responsibility for communications.
After people have thought through what their strengths are, how they perform, what their values are and especially what their contribution should be, they then have to ask: “Who needs to know this? On whom do I depend? And who depends on me?” And then one goes and tells all these people and tells them in the way in which they receive a message, that is, in a memo if they are readers, or by talking to them if they are listeners and so on.
Whenever I—or any other consultant—have started to work with an organization, I am first told of all the “personality conflicts” within it. Most of them arise from the fact that one person does not know what the other person does, or does not know how the other person does his or her work, or does not know what contribution the other person concentrates on, and what results he or she expects. And the reason that they do not know is that they do not ask and therefore are not being told.
This reflects human stupidity less than it reflects human history. It was unnecessary until very recently to tell any of these things to anybody. Everybody in a district of the medieval city plied the same trade—there was a street of goldsmiths, and a street of shoemakers, and a street of armorers. (In Japan’s Kyoto there are still the streets of the potters, the streets of the silk weavers, the streets of the lacquer makers.) One goldsmith knew exactly what every other goldsmith was doing; one shoemaker knew exactly what every other shoemaker was doing; one armorer knew exactly what every other armorer was doing. There was no need to explain anything. The same was true on the land where everybody in a valley planted the same crop as soon as the frost was out of the ground. There was no need to tell one’s neighbor that one was going to plant potatoes—that, after all, was exactly what the neighbor did too, and at the same time.
And those few people who did things that were not “common,” the few professionals, for instance, worked alone, and also did not have to tell anybody what they were doing. Today the great majority of people work with others who do different things.
As said before, the marketing vice-president may have come out of sales and knows everything about sales. But she knows nothing about promotion and pricing and advertising and packaging and sales planning, and so on—she has never done any of these things. Then it is incumbent on the people who do these things to make sure that the marketing vice-president understands 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 these high-grade knowledge specialists are doing, it is primarily their fault, and not that of the marketing vice-president. They have not told her. They have not educated her. Conversely, it is the marketing vice-president’s responsibility to make sure that every one of the people she works with understands how she looks on marketing, what her goals are, how she works and what she expects of herself and of every one of them.
Even people who understand the importance of relationship responsibility often do not tell their associates and do not ask them. They are afraid of being thought presumptuous, inquisitive or stupid. They are wrong. Whenever anyone 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 plan to concentrate on and the results I should be expected to deliver,” the response is always: “This is most helpful. But why haven’t you told me earlier?”
And one gets the same reaction without a single exception in my experience—if one then asks: “And what do I need to know about your strengths, how you perform, your values and your pro-posed contribution?”
In fact, a knowledge worker should request of people with whom he or she works—whether as subordinates, superiors, col-leagues, team members—that they adjust their behavior to the knowledge worker’s strengths, and to the way the knowledge worker works. Readers should request that their associates write to them, listeners should request that their associates first talk to them and so on. And again, whenever that is being done, the reaction of the other person will be: “Thanks for telling me. It’s enormously helpful. But why didn’t you ask me earlier?”
Organizations are no longer built on force. They are increasingly built on trust. Trust does not mean that people like one another. It means that people can trust one another. And this pre-supposes that people understand one another. Taking relationship responsibility is therefore an absolute necessity.。
It is a duly Whether one is a member of the organization, a consultant to it, a supplier to it, a distributor, one owes relationship responsibility to every one with whom one works, on whose work one depends; and who in turn depends on one’s own work.
Adapted from “Management Challenges for the 21st Century”, P.161-195
