Re-Readable: Managing Oneself
Career planning advice from Drucker still holds up
It’s weird out there right now. I’m guessing everyone is feeling that vibe?
If you have a job, you’re probably worried about a re-org. If you’re looking for a new role, you know there’s a skittishness, a start/stop herky-jerky-ness, that means real, good old fashioned, full time jobs are tricky to find.
The way forward is a lot less clear than it used to be.
Based on the folks I’ve spoken with over the last 6 months, a lot of you are thinking about making some changes. Career pivots. Downsizing. New industries. Buying businesses. Starting something. Going solo.
Before you make a big change, it helps to know where you’re starting from. Normally, I’d do my version of Simon Sinek and tell you to start with your “why”. Or, I’d connect you with a pro like Laura Best (more on her work soon!) or Laura King and encourage you to do some “purpose” work. Scott Monty has some great writing on purpose and values-driven work, informed by the classics, too, as a way to get you started.
The “vision” and purpose work is best served by doing some individual prep work. Take a step back and do a “systems check,” reflect and make sure you’ve got a clear assessment of your self: Your skills, your success, your assets and the stuff you have to work on.
Self reflection is a habit that great leaders cultivate over time. It’s not a superpower, but it can help you find yours.
Drucker, Classics and Timelessness
One of my themes for this year is to go back and re-read some of the classics of business leadership. There are so many great books that were highly influential in their time, but got lost in the churn of changing media and leadership trends.
With so many “thought leaders” and “coaches” grinding for “engagement” (note: You can subscribe below, ha ha) you might be biased towards the newest framework or course. However, most of what you need is already out there.
In 1999, a 90 (!) year old Peter Drucker published an article in the Harvard Business Review called “Managing Oneself”. He must have been in his “summing up” phase and we all got the benefit of his incredible expertise and wisdom. This one is solid gold, and offers a good way into his thinking on executive effectiveness and excellence.
Its the POV from a guy who was either literally or figuratively in every Fortune 500 boardroom over 50 years of consulting and teaching. So, he’s seen the best of real-deal corporate leaders and the worst of creepy corporate weasels.
The writing here is lucid and strong. It’s going to see a little old timey. Sure, he comes from a different era, where work structures were more top down, male-dominated and slower. He wrote before the rise of social media and the proliferation of self-help/personal development gurus. However, he literally coined the term “knowledge worker.” He was remarkably prescient about the way tech was going to uproot convention. And, he saw the future of a collaborative, diverse workplace. Basically, he saw your career coming, people.
Listen to him.
A couple main points to focus on:
Feedback analysis is a power up for self reflection - “Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong.” That checks out. We all have our blindspots. His recommendation: Use a tool called Feedback Analysis. It’s not unlike a retrospective on your decision process. As part of your reset, you can go back and look at your major decisions over the last year and gauge whether they were good or not-good decisions and how you got to the decision. Were your assumptions right? Did you overthink things? What didn’t you see? You can use this practice to understand your strengths and weaknesses and get some clarity on how to use your skills going forward.
How do you perform? - Here, he’s asking you to consider the conditions under which you do your best work. These days, there are dozens of frameworks you can use to help you analyze your performance drivers. I find a lot of them focus on what we like to do, or what makes us feel fully engaged. That’s all great. But, old-school Drucker is focused on results: How do you deliver actual impact: KPIs, finished projects, team impact, etc. His working assumption is that learning styles impact outcomes, so he focuses on understanding your styles (reader, writer, listener). And, he suggests you understand the context where you’re at your best: org size and settings (big org vs small) and structure (rigid vs fluid).
Responsibility for Relationships - He places a strong emphasis on the importance of owning your side of building strong relationships in your work setting. More importantly, knowing your part in helping your team mates be successful. “The first secret of effectiveness is to understand the people you work with and depend on so that you can make use of their strengths, their ways of working, and their values. Working relationships are as much based on the people as they are on the work.”
He’s Giving You a Planning Framework
I would use this article as rough outline for writing a personal development plan. He lays out a practical roadmap to getting your shit figured out. It’s no nonsense, but empathetic. His advice might seem a little obvious, but all timeless wisdom seems obvious in hindsight. He’s basically encouraging you to just do the work of honest, clear-eyed self reflection
Paired with the deeper work to understand your personal values, purpose and a mission, Drucker’s guide will help you get clarity on what you want to do in your next phase.
side note: Check out how cool Drucker’s house was! You can view it virtually. I appreciate how modest it is/was, given the impact he made.
Love the focus on the classics, whether they're ancient classics or business classics. Drucker is one of the all-time greats, and the reason is just as you indicated: he understands human behavior and his advice and insights are timeless.
And thanks for the link to the Drucker house! I'm going to be spending lots of time there looking at the details.