Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics)

by Peter F. Drucker

feedback analysis.

Others learn by hearing themselves talk.

Verbal whiteboarding

Do I produce results as a decision maker or as an adviser?

Do I work best in a big organization or a small one?

And try not to take on work you cannot perform or will only perform poorly.

What kind of person do I want to see in the mirror in the morning?

To work in an organization whose value system is unacceptable or incompatible with one’s own condemns a person both to frustration and to nonperformance.

To be effective in an organization, a person’s values must be compatible with the organization’s values. They do not need to be the same, but they must be close enough to coexist.

Successful careers are not planned.

Managing yourself requires taking responsibility for relationships.

It is incumbent on the people who work with them to observe them, to find out how they work, and to adapt themselves to what makes their bosses most effective. This, in fact, is the secret of “managing” the boss.

The second part of relationship responsibility is taking responsibility for communication.