Success .in the knowledge economy comes tothose who know themselves - their strengths,

their values, and how they best perfoI111.

by Peter F. DruckerHSTORY'S GREAT ACHIEVERS - A

Napoleon, a da Vinci, a Mozart-have always managed them-

selves. That, in large measure, is whatmakes them great achievers. But theyare rare exceptions, so unusual both intheir talents and their accomplishmentsas to be considered outside the bound-aries of ordinary human existence. N ow,most of us, even those of us with modestendowments, will have to learn to managePetN P. Drucker is the Marie RankiD Cloxh Professoz of SocialScience and ManagBmellt at Clazemont Gzadaau Univusity inClazemont, California. This article is an excelpt from his forth-coming book Management Challenges for the 21st Century(Hal'perCollins, May L999).

65ARTWORK IY CRAIG fRAZIER

ourselves. We will have to learn to develop our- tions these two men founded, the Calvinist churchselves. We will have to place ourselves where we and the Jesuit order, came to dominate Europecan make the greatest contribution. And we will within 30 years.have to stay mentally alert and engaged during a SO- Practiced consistently, this simple method willyear working life, which means knowing how and show you within a fairly short period of time, maybewhen to change the work we do. two or three years, where your strengths lie - and

this is the most important thing to know. Theh h 7 method will show you what you are doing or failingW at Are My Strengt s. to do that deprives you of the full benefits of your

Most people think they know what they are good strengths. It will show you where you are not partic-at. They are usually wrong. More often, people ularly competent. And finally, it will show youknow what they are not good at - and even then where you have no strengths and cannot perform.more people are wrong than right. And yet, a person Several implications for action follow from feed-can perfonn only from strength. One cannot build back analysis. First and foremost, concentrate onperformance on weaknesses, let alone on some- your strengths. Put yourself where your strengthsthing one cannot do at all. can produce results.

Throughout history, people had little need to Second, work on improving your strengths.know their strengths. A person was born into a po- Analysis will rapidly show where you need to im-sition and a line of work: the peasant's son would prove skills or acquire new ones. It will also showalso be a peasant; the artisan's daughter, an artisan's the gaps in your knowledge - and those can usuallywife, and so on. But now people have choices. We be filled. Mathematicians are born, but everyoneneed to know our strengths in order to know where can learn trigonometry.we belong. Third, discover where your intellectual arro-

The only way to discover your strengths is gance is causing disabling ignorance and overcomethrough feedback analysis. Whenever you make a it. Far too many people - especially people withkey decision or take a key action, write down what great expertise in one area - are contemptuous ofyou expect will happen. Nine or 12. months later, knowledge in other areas or believe that beingcompare the actual RSults with your expectations. bright is a substitute for knowledge. First-rate engi-I have been practicing this method for I S to 2.0 neers, for instance, tend to take pride in not know-years now, and every time I do it, I am surprised. ing anything about people. Human beings, theyThe feedback analysis showed me, for instance- believe, are much too disorderly for the good engi-

neering mind. Human resource pro-fessionals, by contrast, often pride

To stay mentally alert and engaged themselves on ~eir ignorance.of c:ie-mentary accounting or of quantitative

during a 50-year working life, one methods altogether. But taking pridein such ignorance is self-defeating. Go

must know how and when to to work on acquiring the skills andknowledge you need to fully realize

change the work one does. your strengths.It is equally essential to remedy

your bad habits-the things you do orfail to do that inhibit your effectiveness and per-formance. Such habits will quickly show up in thefeedback. For example, a planner may find thathis beautiful plans fail because he does not followthrough on them. Like so many brilliant people,he believes that ideas move mountains. But bull-dozers move mountains; ideas show where thebulldozers should go to work. This planner willhave to learn that the work does not stop when theplan is completed. He must find people to carry outthe plan and explain it to them. He must adapt andchange it as he puts it into action. And finally, hemust decide when to stop p,~hing the plan.

and to my great surprise - that I have an intuitiveunderstanding of technical people, whether theyare engineers or accountants or market researchers.It also showed me that I don't really resonate withgeneralists.

Feedback analysis is by no means new. It wasinvented sometime in the fourteenth century by anotherwise totally obscure German theologian andpicked up quite independently, some ISO years later,by John Calvin and Ignatius Loyola, each of whomincorporated it into the practice of his followers. Infact, the steadfast focus on perfom1ance and resultsthat this habit produces explains why the institu-

HAAVA:B.D BUSINES~ REVIEW Maldt-Aprill99966

ing in ways that they best perfonn. A few commonpersonality traits usually determine how a personperfonns.

Am I a reader or a listener? The first thing toknow is whether you are a reader or a listener. Fartoo few people even know that there are readers andlisteners and that people are rarely both. Even fewerknow which of the two they themselves are. Butsome examples will show how damaging such igno-rance can be.

When Dwight Eisenhower was commander inchief of the Allied forces in Europe, he was the dar-ling of the press. His press conferences were famous

At the same time, feedback will also reveal whenthe problem is a lack of manners. Manners are thelubricating oil of an organization. It is a law of na-ture that two moving bodiea in contact with eachother create friction. This is as true for human be-ings as it is for in.Anim.ate objects. Manners - simplethings like saying "please" and "thank you" andknowing a person's name or asking after her fam-ily - enable two people to work together whetherthey like each other or not. Bright people, especiallybright young people, often do not understand this.H analysis shows that someone's brilliant workfails again and again as soon as cooperation fromothers is required, it probably indi-catea a lack of courtesy - that is, a lackofmann~. .. It takes far more energy to improve

Companng your expectations WIthyourreaultsalsoindicateawhatnotto from incompetence to mediocrity00. We all have a vast number of areasin which we have no talent or skill than to improve from first-rateand little chance of becoming evenmediocre. In those areas a person- performance to excellence.and especially a knowledge worker-should not take on work, jobs, and-assignments. One should waste as little effort aspossible on improving areas of low competence. Ittakea far more energy and work to improve from in-competence to mediocrity than it takea to improvefrom first-rate performance to excellence. And yetmost people -especially most teachers and most or-g~!'~~tions - concentrate on making incompetentperionners into mediocre onea. Energy, reaources,and time should go instead to m~ljn.g a competentperson into a star performer.

How Do I Perform?Amazingly few people know how they get thingsdone. Indeed, most of us do not even know that dif-ferent people work and perforDl differently. Toomany people work in ways that are not their ways,and that almost guarantees nonperforDlance. Forknowledge workers, How do I perform? may be aneven more important question than What are mystrengths ?

Like one's strengths, how one performs is unique.It is a matter of persona lity. Whether personality bea matter of nature or nurture, it surely is formedlong before a person goes to work. And how a per-son performs is a given, just as what a person isgood at or not good at is a given. A person's way ofI-enorming can be slightly modified, but it is un.likely to be completely changed - and certainly noteasily. Just as people achieve results by doing whatthey are good at, they also achieve results by work-

for their style-General Eisenhower showed totalcommAnd of whatever question he was asked, andhe was able to describe a situation and explain apolicy in two or three beauti£ully polished and ele-gant sentences. Ten years later, the same journal-ists who had been his admirers held PresidentEisenhower in open contempt. He never addressedthe questions, they complained, but rambled onendlessly about something else. And they constantlyridiculed him £or butchering the King's English inincoherent and ungrammatical answers.

Eisenhower apparently did not know that he wasa reader, not a listener. When he was commanderin chief in Europe, his aides made sure that everyquestion from the press was presented in writing atleast half an hour before a conference was to begin.And then Eisenhower was in total command. Whenhe became president, he succeeded two listeners,Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Bothmen knew themselves to be listeners and both en-joyed &ee-for-all press conferences. Eisenhowermay have felt that he had to do what his two prede-cessors had done. As a result, he never even heardthe questions journalists asked And Eisenhower isnot even an exu~me case of a nonlistener.

A few years later, Lyndon Johnson destroyed hispresidency, in large measure, by not knowing thathe was a listener. His predecessor, John Kennedy,was a reader who had assembled a brilliant groupof writers as his aMistants, muJng sure that theywrote to him before discussing their memos in per-

67HABVABD BUSINESS REVIEW M8J1:b-Apri) 1999

- ,MANAGING ON...LP

i son. Johnson kept these people on his staff-and: they kept on writing. He never, apparendy, under-

stood one word of what they wrote. Yet as a senator,Johnson had been SUperb1 for parliamentarians have

! to be, above all, listeners.i Few listeners can be made, or can make them-I selves, into competent readers - and vice versa.

The listener who tries to be a reader will, therefore,I suffer the fate of Lyndon Johnson, whereas the

reader who tries to be a listener will suffer the fateI of Dwight Eisenhower. They will not perform orI achieve.

How do I leam? The second thing to know aboutI how one performs is to know how one learns.! Many first-class writers - Winston Churchill is butlone example - do poorly in school. They tend to re-

member their schooling as pure torture. Yet few oftheir classmates remember it the same way. They

I may not have enjoyed the school very much, buti the worst they suffered was boredom. The explana-I tion is that writers do not, as a rule, learn by listen-I ing and reading. They learn by writing. BecauseI schools do not allow them to learn this way, they

get poor grades.I Schools everywhere are organized on the assump-I tion that there is only one right way to learn and

that it is the same way for everybody. But to beI forced to learn the way a school teaches is sheer hell! for students who learn differendy. Indeed, there areII probably half a dozen different ways to learn.

There are people, like Churchill, who learn byI writing. Some people learn by taking copious notes.

week and then talking at them for two or threehours. He would raise policy issues and arguethree different positions on each one. He rarelyasked his associates for comments or questions;he simply needed an audience to hear himself talk.That's how he learned And although he is a fairlyextreme case, learning through talking is by nomeans an unusual method. Successful trial lawyers

I learn the same way, as do many medical diagnosti-cians (and so do I).

Of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, un-I derstanding how you learn is the easiest to acquire.

When I ask people, "How do you learn?" most ofthem know the answer. But when I ask, "Do youact on this knowledge?" few answer yes. And yet,acting on this knowledge is the key to performance;or rather, not acting on this knowledge condemnsone to nonperformance.

How do I perform? and How do I learn? are thefirst questions to ask. But they are by no meansthe only ones. To m~n~ge yourself effectively, youalso have to ask, Do I work well with people or amI a loner? And if you do work well with people, youthen must ask, In what relationship?

Some people work best as subordinates. GeneralGeorge Patton, the great American military hero ofWorld War II, is a prime example. Patton was Amer-ica's top troop commAnder. Yet when he was pr0-posed for an independent command, GeneralGeorge Marshall, the U.S. chief of staff - and proba-bly the most successful picker of men in U.S. his-tory - said, "Patton is the best subordinate the Amer-

I ican army has ever produced, but heI would be the worst commAnder."I Do not try to change yourself-you Some people work best as teamI members. Others work best alone.

are unlikely to succeed. Work to Some are exceptionally talented asI . coaches and mentors; others are sim-i Improve the way you perform. ply incompetent as mentors.I Another crucial question is, Do I! produce results as a decision maker or: Beethoven, for example, left behind an enormous as an adviser? A great many people perform best as: number of sketchboob, yet he said he never actu- advisers but cannot take the burden and pressure of! ally looked at them when he composed. Asked why maki~ the decision. A good many other people, byI' he kept them, he is reponed to have replied, "If contrast, need an adviser to force themselves to

I don't write it down immediately, I forget it ri,ght think; then they can make decisions and act onI away. If I put it into a sketchbook, I never forget them with speed, self-confidence, and courage.I it and I never have to look it up again." Some pea- This is a reason, by the way, that the number two! pIe learn by doing. Others learn by hearing them- person in anorgani zation often fails when promotedI selves talk. to the number one position. The top spot requiresI A chief executive I know who converted a small a decision maker. Strong decision makers oftenI and mediocre family business into the leading put somebody they trust into the number two spotI company in its industry was one of those people as their adviser - and in that position the person is

who learn by t~1k;ng. He was in the habit of call- outstanding. But in the number one spot, the sameI ing his entire senior staff into his office once a person fails. He or she knows what the decision

68 HAB.VAID BUSI~SS REVIEW ~ 1999

should be but cannot accept the responsibility ofactually m~1dng it.

Other important questions to ask include, DoI perform well under stress or do I need a highlystructured and predictable environment? Do I workbest in a big o~~niZ2tion or a small one? Few pe0-ple work well in all kinds of environments. Againand again, I have seen people who were very suc-cessful in large Org~Dj7~tions Hounder miserablywhen they moved into smaller ones. And the re-verse is equally true.

The conclusion bears repeating: do not try tochange yourself-you are unlikely to succeed. Butwork hard to improve the way you perform. And trynot to take on work you cannot perform or willonly perform poorly.

69RAIVAIn BUSI~SS IEVIBW MaId!-A.-i11999

What Are My Values?To be able to manAge yourself, you flnally have toask, What are my values? This is not a question ofethics. With respect to ethics, the rules are thesame for everybody, and the test is a simple one. Icall it the "mirror test."

In the early years of this century, the most highlyrespected diplomat of all the great powers was theGerman ambassador in London. He was clearly des-tined for great things- to become his country's for-eign minister, at least, if not its federal chancellor.Yet in 1906 he abruptly resigned rather than presideover a dinner given by the diplomatic corps forEdward vll. The king was a notorious womanizerand made it clear what kind of dinner he wanted.The 3m-hA-8-~dor is felK)rted to have said, "1 refuseto see a pimp in the mirror in the moming whenI shave."

That is the mirror test. Ethics requires that youask yourself, What kind of person do I want to seein the mirror in the moming? What is ethical be-havior in one kind of org~ni7...tion or situation isethical behavior in another. But ethics are onlypart of a value system - especially of an orgAni7.A-tion's value system.

To work in an organization whose value systemis unacceptable or incompatible with one's owncondemns a person both to frustration and to non-performance.

Consider the experience of a highly successfulhuman resomces executive whose company wasacquired by a bigger organization. After the acquisi-tion, she was promoted to do the kind of work shedid best, which included selecting people for impor-tant positions. The executive deeply believed thata company should hire people for such positionsfrom the outside only after exhausting all the inside

possibilities. But her new company believed in firstlooking outside "to bring in fresh blood." There issomething to be said for both approaches - in myexperience, the proper one is to do some of both.They are, however, fundamentally incompatible-not as policies but as values. They bespeak differentviews of the relationship between organizationsand people; different views of the responsibility ofan org~ni~~tion to its people and their develop-ment; and different views of a person's most impor-tant contribution to an enterprise. After severalyears of frilstration, the executive quit - at consid-erable financial loss. Her values and the values ofthe org~ni7..tion simply were not compatible.

Similarly, whether a phannaceutical companytries to obtain results by making constant, smallimprovements or by achieving occasional, highlyexpensive, and risky "breakthroughs" is not pri-marilyan economic question. The results of eitherstrategy may be pretty much the same. At bottom,there is a conflict between a value system that seesthe company's contribution in terms of helpingphysicians do better what they already do and avalue system that is oriented toward making scien-tific discoveries.

Whether a business should be run for short-termresults or with a focus on the long term is likewisea question of values. Financial analysts believe thatbusinesses can be run for both simultaneously. Suc-cessful businesspeople know better. To be sure,every company has to produce short-term results.But in any conflict between short-term results andlong-term growth, each company will determine itsown priority.111is is not primarily a disagreementabout economics. It is fundamentally a value con-flict regarding the function of a business and the re-sponsibility of m~n~gement.

Value conflicts are not limited to business orga-nizations. One of the fastest-growing pastoralchurches in the United States measures success bythe number of new parishioners. Its leadership be-lieves that what matters is how many newcomersjoin the congregation. The Good Lord will thenminister to their spiritual needs or at least to theneeds of a sufficient percentage. Another pastoral,evangelical church believes that what matters ispeople's spiritual growth. The church eases outnewcomers who join but do not enter into its spiri-tuallife.

Again, this is not a matter of numbers. At firstI glance, it appears that the second church growsi more slowly. But it retains a far larger proportion of

newcomers than the first one does. Its growth, inother words, is more solid. This is also not a theo-logical problem, or only secondarily so. It is a prob-

lem about values. In a public debate, one pastor ar-gued, "Unless you first come to church, you willnever find the gate to the Kingdom of Heaven."

"No," answered the other. "Until you first lookfor the gate to the Kingdom of Heaven, you don'tbelong in church."

OrganL~tions, like people, have values. To be ef-fective in anorga mutton, a person's values must becompatible with the or~Ani7~tion's values. They donot need to be the same, but they must be close

values? And then they can and should decide wherethey belong.

Or rather, they should be able to decide wherethey do not belong. The person who has learned thathe or she does not perform well in a big ~Ani2:ationshould have learned to say no to a position in one.The person who has learned that he or she is not adecision maker should have learned to say no toa decision-making assignment. A General Patton(who probably never learned this himself) should

have learned to say no to an independentcommA.nd.

r Equally important, knowing the answerto these questions enables a person to say toan opportunity, an oHer, or an assignment,"Yes, I will do that. But this is the way Ishould be doing it. This is the way it shouldbe structured This is the way the relation-ships should be. The$e are the kind of results

you should expect from mej and in this time frame,because this is who I am."

Successful careers are not planned. They developwhen people are prepared Mr opportUnities ~~usethey know their strengths their method of work,and their values. Knowing1where one belongs cantransform an ordinary person - hard-working andcom~tent but otherwise rediocre - into an out-standing performer. ,

enough to coexist. Otherwise, the person will notonly be frustrated but also will not produce results.

A person's strengths and the way that person per-forms rarely conflict; the two are complementary.But there is sometimes a conflict between a per-son's values and his or herstreD gths. What one doeswell- even very well and successfully - may not fitwith one's value system. In that case, the work maynot appear to be worth devoting one's life to (oreven a substantial portion thereof).

If I may, allow me to interject a personal note.Many years ago, I too had to decide between my val-ues and what I was ooing successfully. I was ooingvery well as a young investment banker in Londonin the mid-I930S, and the work clearly fit mystrengths. Yet 1 did not see myself making a contri-bution as an asset manager. People, I realized, werewhat I valued, and I saw no point in being the rich-est man in the cemetery. I had no money and noother job prospects. Despite the continuing Depres-sion, I quit-and it was the right thing to do. Values,in other words, are and should be the ultimate test.

Where Do I Belong?A small number of people know very early wherethey belong. Mathematicians, musicians, andcooks, for instance, are usually mathematicians,musicians, and cooks by the time they are four orfive years old. Physicians usually decide on their ca-reers in their teens, if not earlier. But most people,especially highly gifted people, do not really knowwhere they belong until they are well past theirmid-twenties. By that time, however, they shouldknow the answers to the three questions: What aremy strengths? How do I perforDl? and, What are my

What Should Contribute?Throughout history, the great majority of peoplenever had to ask the question, What should I con-tribute? They were told what to contribute, andtheir tasks were dictated either by the work itself-as it was for the peasant o~ artisan-or by a masteror a mistress, as it was for domestic servants. Anduntil very recently, it Waf taken for granted thatmost people were subor~nates who did as theywere told. Even in the 19SOS and 19608, the newknowledge workers (the i so-called organizationmen) looked to their company's personnel depart-ment to plan their careers.

Then in the late 19608, no one wanted to be toldwhat to do any longer. Young men and women be-gan to ask, What do I want to do? And what theyheard was that the way to contribute was to "doyour own thing. " But this solution was as wrong asthe or&~ni~~tion men's had been. Very few of thepeople who believed that doing one's own thingwould lead to contribution, self-hI1fil1ment, andsuccess achieved any of the three.

But still, there is no return to the old answer ofdoing what you are told qr assigned to do. Knowl-edge workers in particular have to learn to ask a

70 HAIVAKD BUSINISS REVIEW MMch-AIIdlI999

pIe. That is true whether theYlare members of an or-g~niz~tion or independently lemployed. M~n~gjngyourself requires taking r~ibility for relation-ships. This has two parts.

The first is to accept the f~ct that other peopleare as much individuals as you yourself are. Theyperversely insist on behavrnt like human beings.This means that they too hav~ their strengths; theytoo have their ways of gettingl things done; they toohave their values. To be e££~tive, therefore, you

question that has not been asked before: Whatshould my contribution be? To answer it, theymust address three distinct elements: What doesthe situation require? Given my strengths, my wayof performing, and my values, how can I make thegreatest contribution to what needs to be done?And finally, What results have to be achieved tomake a difference?

Consider the experience of a newly appointedhospital administrator. The hospital was big andprestigious, but it had been coasting onits reputation for 30 years. The new ad-ministrator decided that his contribu-tion should be to establish a standard ofexcellence in one important area with-in two years. He chose to focus on theemergency room, which was big, visi-ble, and sloppy. He decided that everypatient who came into the ER had to beseen by a qualified nurse within 60 sec-onds. Within 12. months, the hospital'semergency room had become a model

! for all hospitals in the United States,and within another two years, the wholehospital had been transformed.

As this example suggests, it is rarelypossible-or even particularly fruitful-to look too far ahead A plan can usuallycover no more than 18 months and stillbe reasonably clear and specific. So thequestion in most cases should be, Whereand how can I achieve results that will

I , make a difference within the next year

and a half? The answer must balanceseveral things. First, the results shouldbe hard to achieve - they should require"stretching," to use the current buzz-word. But also, they should be withinreach. To aim at results that cannot beachieved-or that can be only under themost unlikely circumstances - is notbeing ambitious; it is being foolish. Sec-ond, the results should be meaningful. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person-hard-They should make a difference. Finally, working but otherwise mediocre-into an outstanding performer.results should be visible and, if at allpossible, measurable. From this will come a courseof action: what to do, where and how to start, andwhat goals and deadlines to set.

have to know the strengths, the performance modes",:>and the values of your coworkers.

That sounds obvious, but f~w people pay atten-tion to it. Typical is the perso* who was trained towrite reports in his or her fus~ assignment becausethat boss was a reader. Even if ~e next boss is a lis-tener, the person goes on writing reports that, in-variably, produce no results. Invariably the bosswill think the employee is s~pid, incompetent,and lazy, and he or she will f~. But that could have

Responsibility for RelationshipsVery few people work by themselves and achieveresults by themselves - a few great artists, a few

great scientists, a few great athletes. Most peoplework with others and are effective with other peo-

71HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW Man:h-Aprill999

The Second Half of Your LifeWhen work for most people meant manual labor,there was no need to worry about the second halfof your life. You simply kept on doing what youhad always done. And if yqu were lucky enough tosurvive 40 years of hard work in the mill or on therailroad, you were quite happy to spend the restof your life doing nothma. Today, however, mostwork is knowledge work, land knowledge workersare not "finished" after 40 years on the job, they aremerely bored.

We hear a great deal of tfix about the midlife cri-sis of the executive. It is mostly boredom. At 45,most executives have reached the peak of theirbusiness careers, and they know it. After .1.0 years ofdoing very much the sainb kind of work, they are ,

been avoided if the employee had only looked at thenew boss and analyzed how thi3 boss performs.

Bosses are neither a title on the organizationchart nor a /I function. /I They are individuals and areentitled to do their work in the way they do it best.It is incumbent on the people who work with themto observe them, to find out how they work, md toadapt themselves to what makes their bosses mosteffective. This, in fact, is the secret of "mAnAging"the boss.

The same holds true for all your coworkers. Eachworks his or her way, not your way. And each is en-titled to work in his or her way. What matters iswhether they perform and what their values are. Asfor how they perform - each is likely to do it differ-ently. The first secret of effectiveness is to under-stand the people you work with and depend on sothat you can make use of their strengths, theirways of working, and their values. Working rela-tionships are as much based on the people as theyare on the work.

The second part of relationship responsibility istaking responsibility for communication. WheneverI, or any other consultant, start to work with an or-~..ni'7~tion, the first thing I hear about are all the per-sonality conflicts. Most of these arise from the factthat people do not know what other people are doingand how they do their work, or what contributionthe other people are concentrating on and what re-sults they expect. And the reason they do not knowis that they have not asked and therefore have notbeen told.

This failure to ask reflects human stupidity lessthan it reflects human history. Until recently, itwas unnecessary to tell my of these things to any-body. In the medieval city, everyone in a districtplied the same trade. In the countryside, everyonein a valley planted the same crop 88 soon as thefrost was out of the ground. Even those few peoplewho did things that were not "common" workedalone, 80 they did not have to tell anyone what theywere doing.

Today the great majority of people work withothers who have different tasks and responsibili-ties. The marketing vice president may have comeout of sales and know everything about sales, butshe knows nothing about the things she has neverdone-pricing, advertisin& paclr-3ging, and the like.So the people who do these things must make surethat the marketing vice president understandswhat they are trying to do, why they are trying todo it, how they are going to do it, and what resultsto expect.

If the marketing vice president does not under-stand what these high-grade knowledge specialists

HARVARD BUSIH'SS REVIEW M811:b-Apil199972

are doing, it is primarily thE' fault, not hers. Theyhave not educated her. Con ly, it is the market-

I ing vice president's responsi ility to make sure thatall of her coworkers understand how she looks atmarketing: what her goals a;re, how she works, andwhat she expects of herself and of each one of them.

Even people who understand the importance oftaking responsibility for relationships often do not

I communicate sufficiently I with their associates.They are afraid of being thought presumptuous orinquisitive or stupid They are wrong. Wheneversomeone goes to his or h~r associates and says, \I1This is what I am good at. This is how I work. :These are my values. This is the contribution I planto concentrate on and the results I should be ex- !

I pected to deliver," the resWnse is always, "This ismost helpful. But why didn't you tell me earlier?" I

And one gets the same reaction - without excep-tion, in my experience- if ~e continues by asking," And what do I need to knoW about your strengths,how you perform, your values, and your proposedcontribution?" In fact, knowledge workers should

I request this of everyone With whom they work,, whether as subordinate, superior, colleague, or team

member. And again, whenever this is done, the re-action is always, "Thanks 'or asking me. But whydidn't you ask me earlier?"

Org_n;7..tions are no longer built on force but ontrust. The existence of ~t between people does

I not necessarily mean thatl they like one another.It means that they understand one another. Takingresponsibility for relationships is therefore an ab-solute necessity. It is a dut>t. Whether one is a mem-ber of the organization, a consultant to it, a supplier,or a distributor, one owes that responsibility to allone's coworkers: those whqse work one depends on

I as well as those who depen(l on one's own work.

People who manage the seCond half of their livesmay always be a minority. ~ majority may "retireon the job" and count the years until their actualretirement. But it is this ~ority, the men andwomen who see a long wor~-life expectancy asan opportunity both for the$elves and for society,who will become leaders and models.

There is one prerequisite for m~n~ging the sec-ond half of your life: you must begin long before youenter it. When it first became clear 30 years ago thatworking-life expectancies were lengthening veryfast, many observers (including myself) believedthat retired people would increasingly become vol-unteers for nonprofit institutions. That has nothappened. If one does not begin to volunteer beforeone is 40 or so, one will not 'Volunteer once past 60.

Similarly, all the social entrepreneurs I know be-gan to work in their chosen second enterprise longbefore they reached their peaJc; in their original busi-ness. Consider the example of a successful lawyer,the legal counsel to a large corporation, who hasstarted a venture to establish model schools in hisstate. He began to do volunteer legal work for theschools when he was around 35. He was elected tothe school board at age 40. At age 50, when he hadamassed a fortune, he started his own enterprise tobuild and to run model schools. He is, however,still working nearly full-tim~ as the lead counsel inthe company he helped foun~ as a young lawyer.

There is another reason to develop a second ma-jor interest, and to develop it early. No one can ex-pect to live very long without experiencing a seri-ous setback in his or her life or work. There is thecompetent engineer who is passed over for promo-

very good at their jobs. But they are not learningor contributing or deriving challenge and satisfac-tion from the job. And yet they are still likely toface another 2.0 if not 2. 5 years of work. That is why

I ma.na.ging oneself increasingly leads one to begin asecond career.

There are three ways to develop a second career.The first is actually to start one. Often this takesnothing more than moving from one kind of orga-nization to another: the divisional controller in alarge corporation, for instance, becomes the con-troller of a medium-sized hospital. But there arealso growing numbers of people who move intodifferent lines of work altogether: the businessexecutive or government official who enters theministry at 45, for instance; or the midlevel m.:ln.:lgerwho leaves corporate life after 2.0 years to attendlaw school and become a small-town attorney.

We will see many more second careers under-taken by people who have achieved modest successin their first jobs. Such people have substantialskills, and they know how to work. They need acommunity - the house is empty with the childrengone - and they need income as well. But above all,they need challenge.

The second way to prepare for the second half ofyour life is to develop a parallel career. Many peoplewho are very successful in their first careers stay inthe work they have been doin& either on a full-timeor a part-time or consulting basis. But in addition,they create a parallel job, usually in a nonprofit or-~.:IniZJation, that takes another ten hours of work aweek. They might take over the administration oftheir church, for instance, or the presidency of thelocal Girl Scouts Council. They mightrun the battered women's shelter,work as a children's librarian for the There is one prerequisite forlocal public library, sit on the schoolboard, and so on. managing the second half of your

Finally, there are the social entre-preneurs. These are usually people life: you must begin doing sowho have been very successful in theirfustcareers. They love their work, but long before you enter it.it no longer challenges them. In manycases they keep on doing what theyhave been doing all along but spend less and less oftheir time on it. They also start another activity,usually a nonprofit. My friend Bob Buford, for exam-ple, built a very successful television company thathe still runs. But he has also founded and built a suc-cessful nonprofit organization that works withProtestant churches, and he is building another toteach social entrepreneurs how to manage their ownnonproB.t ventures while still fI~nning their originalbusinesses.

tion at age 45. There is the competent college pro-fessor who realizes at age ~ that she will never geta professorship at a big uni~ersity, even though shemay be fully qualifled for it. There are tragedies inone's family life: the breakup of one's marriage orthe loss of a child. At such times, a second majorinterest - not just a hobby - may make all the differ-ence. The engineer, for example, now knows thathe has not been very succes$ful in his job. But in hisoutside activity-as church treasurer, for example-

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he is a success. One's family may break up, but inthat outside activity there is still a community.

In a society in which success has become so terri-bly important, having options will become increas-ingly vital Historically, there was no such thing asusuccess." The overwhelming majority of peopledid not expect anything but to stay in their "properstation, II as an old English prayer has it. The onlymobility was downward mobility.

In a knowledge 8(XO;iety, however, we expect every-one to be a success. This is clearly an impossibility.For a great many people, there is at best an absenceof failure. Wherever there is success, there has to befailure. And then it is vitally important for the indi-vidual, and equally for the individual's family, tohave an area in which he or she can contribute,make a difference, and be somebody. That meansfinding a second area - whether in a second career,a parallel career, or a social venture-that offers anopportunity for being a leader, for being respected,for being a success.

The challenges of m.anAging oneself may seemobvious, if not elementary. And the answers mayseem self-evident to the point of appearing naive.But msln.aging oneself requires new and unprece-dented things &om the individual, and especially&om the knowledge worker. In effect, m~n~ging one-self demands that each knowledge worker thinkand behave like a chief executive officer. Further,the shift &om manual workeIS who do as they aretold to knowledge workers who have to m~nslgethemselves profoundly challenges social structure.Every existing society, even the most individualis-tic one, takes two things for granted, if only subcon-sciously: that org~ni7'~tions outlive workers, andthat most people stay put.

But today the opposite is true. Knowledge work-ers outlive orgAnizations, and they are mobile. Theneed to m.an.age oneself is therefore creating a revo-lution in human affairs. ~

-If rm not baGk in IS minUta. it mBan8 I probably got on tl1e train tmd W8Dt to M)l'L-

74 HAAVABD BUSlN:f.SS ".VIEW M8n:b-Api11999