» MANAGING YOURSELF

1999

BEST OF HBR

We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: If you've got ambition and

smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where

you started out.

But with opportunity comes responsibility. Companies today aren't manag-

ing their employees'careers; knowledge workers must, effectively, be their

own chief executive officers. It's up to you to carve out your place, to know

when to change course, and to keep yourself engaged and productive during

a work life that may span some 50 years.To do those things well, you'll need

to cultivate a deep understanding of yourself- notonly what your strengths

and weaknesses are but also how you learn, how you work with others, what

your values are, and where you can make the greatest contribution. Because

only when you operate from strengths can you achieve true excellence.

Managing Oneselfby Peter R Drucker

Success in theknowledge economycomes to those whoknow themselves-their strengths, theirvalues, and how theybest perform.

P; istory's great achievers - aNapoleon, a da Vinci, a Mozart - havealways managed themselves. That, inlarge measure, is what makes themgreat achievers. But they are rare excep-tions, so unusual both in their talentsand their accomplishments as to beconsidered outside the boundaries ofordinary human existence. Now, mostof us, even those of us with modest en-dowments, will have to learn to man-age ourselves. We will have to learn todevelop ourselves. We will have to placeourselves where we can make the great-est contribution. And we will have tostay mentally alert and engaged duringa 50-year working life, which meansknowing how and when to change thework we do.

What Are My Strengths?Most people think they know what theyare good at. They are usually wrong.More often, people know what they arenot good at - and even then more peo-ple are wrong than right. And yet, a per-son can perform only from strength.One cannot build performance on weak-nesses, let alone on something one can-not do at all.

Throughout history, people had littleneed to know their strengths. A personwas born into a position and a line ofwork: The peasant's son wouid also bea peasant; the artisan's daughter, anartisan's wife; and so on. But now peoplehave choices. We need to know ourstrengths in order to know where webelong.

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The only way to discover yourstrengths is through feedback analysis.Whenever you make a key decision ortake a key action, write down what youexpect will happen. Nine or 12 monthslater, compare the actual results withyour expectations. I have been practic-ing this method for 15 to 20 years now,and every time I do it, 1 am surprised.The feedback analysis showed me, forinstance-and to my great surprise-thatI have an intuitive understanding oftechnical people, whether they are en-gineers or accountants or market re-searchers. It also showed me that I don'treally resonate with generalists.

Feedback analysis is by no meansnew. It was invented sometime in thefourteenth century by an otherwise to-tally obscure German theologian andpicked up quite independently, some150 years later, by John Calvin and Ig-natius of Loyola, each of whom incor-porated it into the practice of his fol-lowers. In fact, the steadfast focus onperformance and results that this habitproduces explains why the institutionsthese two men founded, the Calvinistchurch and the Jesuit order, came todominate Europe within 30 years.

Practiced consistently, this simplemethod will show you within a fairlyshort period of time, maybe two orthree years, where your strengths lie -and this is the most important thing toknow. The method will show you whatyou are doing or failing to do that de-prives you of the full benefits of yourstrengths. It will show you where youare not particularly competent. And fi-nally, it will show you where you haveno strengths and cannot perform.

Several implications for action followfrom feedback analysis. First and fore-most, concentrate on your strengths. Putyourself where your strengths can pro-duce results.

Peter F. Drucker is the Marie RankinClarke Professor of Social Science andManagement (Emeritus) at ClaremontGraduate University in Claremont, Cali-fornia. This article is an excerpt from hisbook Management Challenges for the21st Century (HarperCollins, 1999)-

Second, work on improving yourstrengths. Analysis will rapidly showwhere you need to improve skills or ac-quire new ones. It will also show the gapsin your knowledge -and those can usu-ally be filled. Mathematicians are bom,but everyone can learn trigonometry.

Third, discover where your intellec-tual arrogance is causing disabling ig-norance and overcome it. Far too manypeople - especially people with great

manners. Manners are the lubricatingoil of an organization. It is a law of na-ture that two moving bodies in contactwith each other create friction. This is astme for human beings as it is for inani-mate objects. Manners- simple thingslike saying "please" and "thank you"and knowing a person's name or askingafter her family-enable two people towork together whether they like eachother or not. Bright people, especially

It takes far more energy to improve fromincompetence to mediocrity than to improvefrom first-rate performance to excelience.

expertise in one area-are contemptu-ous of knowledge in other areas or be-lieve that being bright is a substitutefor knowledge. First-rate engineers, forinstance, tend to take pride in not know-ing anything about people. Human be-ings, they believe, are much too disor-derly for the good engineering mind.Human resources professionals, by con-trast, often pride themselves on their ig-norance of elementary accounting or ofquantitative methods altogether. Buttaking pride in such ignorance is self-defeating. Go to work on acquiring theskiils and knowledge you need to fullyrealize your strengths.

It is equally essential to remedy yourbad habits-the things you do or fail todo that inhibit your effectiveness andperformance. Such habits will quicklyshow up in the feedback. For example,a planner may find that his beautifulplans fail because he does not followthrough on them. Like so many brilliantpeople, he believes that ideas movemountains. But bulldozers move moun-tains; ideas show where the bulldozersshould go to work. This planner willhave to leam that the work does not stopwhen the plan is completed. He mustfmd people to carry out the plan and ex-plain it to them. He must adapt andchange it as he puts it into action. And fi-nally, he must decide when to stop push-ing the plan.

At the same time, feedback will alsoreveal when the problem is a lack of

bright young people, often do not un-derstand this. If analysis shows thatsomeone's brilliant work fails again andagain as soon as cooperation fromothers is required, it probably indicatesa lack of courtesy - that is, a lack ofmanners.

Comparing your expectations withyour results also indicates what not todo. We all have a vast number of areasin which we have no talent or skill andlittle chance of becoming even medio-cre. In those areas a person - and espe-cially a knowledge worker-should nottake on work, jobs, and assignments.One should waste as little effort as pos-sible on improving areas of low compe-tence. It takes far more energy andwork to improve from incompetence tomediocrity than it takes to improvefrom first-rate performance to excel-lence. And yet most people-especiallymost teachers and most organizations-concentrate on making incompetentperformers into mediocre ones. Energy,resources, and time should go insteadto making a competent person into astar performer.

How Do I Perform?Amazingly few people know how theyget things done. Indeed, most of us donot even know that different peoplework and perform differently. Too manypeople work in ways that are not theirways, and that almost guarantees non-performance. For knowledge workers.

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How do I perform? may be an evenmore important question than What aremy strengths?

Like one's strengths, how one per-forms is unique. It is a matter of person-ality. Whether personality be a matter ofnature or nurture, it surely is formedlong before a person goes to work. Andhow a person performs is a given, just aswhat a person is good at or not good atis a given. A person's way of performingcan be slightly modified, but it is un-likely to be completely changed-and cer-tainly not easily. Just as people achieveresults by doing what they are good at,they also achieve results by working inways that they best perform. A few com-mon personality traits usually deter-mine how a person performs.

Am I a reader or a listener? The firstthing to know is whether you are areader or a listener. Far too few peopleeven know that there are readers andlisteners and that people are rarelyboth. Even fewer know which ofthe twothey themselves are. But some exampleswill show how damaging such igno-rance can be.

When Dwight Fisenhower was Su-preme Commander ofthe Allied forcesin Europe, he was the darling of thepress. His press conferences were fa-mous for their style - General Eisen-hower showed tota! command of what-ever question he was asked, and he wasable to describe a situation and explaina policy in two or three beautifully pol-ished and elegant sentences. Ten yearslater, the same journalists who had beenhis admirers held President Eisenhowerin open contempt. He never addressedthe questions, they complained, but ram-bled on endlessly about something else.And they constantly ridiculed him forbutchering the King's English in inco-herent and ungrammatica! answers.

Eisenhower apparently did not knowthat he was a reader, not a listener.When he was Supreme Commander inEurope, his aides made sure that everyquestion from the press was presentedin writing at least half an hour before aconference was to begin. And then Eisen-hower was in total command. When he

became president, he succeeded two lis-teners, Franklin D. Roosevelt and HarryTruman. Both men knew themselves tobe listeners and both enjoyed free-for-allpress conferences. Eisenhower may havefelt that he had to do what his two pre-decessors had done. As a result, he nevereven heard the questions journalistsasked. And Eisenhower is not even anextreme case of a nonlistener.

A few years later, Lyndon Johnson de-stroyed his presidency, in large measure,by not knowing that he was a listener.His predecessor, John Kennedy, was areader who had assembled a brilliantgroup of writers as his assistants, makingsure that they wrote to him before dis-cussing their memos in person. John-son kept these people on his staff-andthey kept on writing. He never, appar-ently, understood one word of whatthey wrote. Yet as a senator, Johnson hadbeen superb; for parliamentarians haveto be, above all, listeners.

Few listeners can be made, or canmake themselves, into competent read-ers - and vice versa. The listener whotries to be a reader will, therefore, suffer

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the fate of Lyndon Johnson, whereas thereader who tries to be a listener will suf-fer the fate of Dwight Eisenhower. Theywill not perform or achieve.

How do I learn? The second thingto know about how one performs is toknow how one learns. Many first-classwriters - Winston Churchill is but oneexample -do poorly in schooi. They tendto remember their schooling as puretorture. Yet few of their classmates re-member it the same way. They may nothave enjoyed the school very much, butthe worst they suffered was boredom.The explanation is that writers do not,as a rule, leam by listening and reading.They leam by writing. Because schoolsdo not allow them to leam this way, theyget poor grades.

Schools everywhere are organized onthe assumption that there is only oneright way to leam and that it is the sameway for everybody. But to be forced toleam the way a school teaches is sheerhell for students who leam differently.

ferent positions on each one. He rarelyasked his associates for comments orquestions; he simply needed an audi-ence to hear himself talk. That's how heleamed. And although he is a fairly ex-treme case, learning through talking isby no means an unusual method. Suc-cessful trial lawyers learn the sameway, as do many medical diagnosticians(and so do I).

Of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, understanding how youleam is the easiest to acquire. When I askpeople, "How do you learn?" most ofthem know the answer. But when I ask,"Do you act on this knowledge?" fewanswer yes. And yet, acting on thisknowledge is the key to performance; orrather, not acting on this knowledgecondemns one to non performance.

Am I a reader or a listener? and Howdo I learn? are the first questions to ask.But they are by no means the only ones.To manage yourself effectively, you alsohave to ask. Do 1 work well with people.

Do not try to change yourself-you are unlikelyto succeed. Work to improve the way you perform.

Indeed, there are probably half a dozendifferent ways to learn.

There are people, like Churchill, wholeam by writing. Some people leam bytaking copious notes. Beethoven,for ex-ample, left behind an enormous num-ber of sketchbooks, yet he said he neveractually looked at them when he com-posed. Asked why he kept them, he isreported to have replied,"If I don't writeit down immediately, I forget it rightaway. If I put it into a sketchbook, I neverforget it and I never have to look it upagain." Some people leam by doing. Oth-ers learn by hearing themselves talk.

A chief executive I know who con-verted a small and mediocre family busi-ness into the leading company in its in-dustry was one of those people wholeam by talking. He was in the habit ofcalling his entire senior staff into hisoffice once a week and then talking atthem for two or three hours. He wouldraise policy issues and argue three dif-

or am I a loner? And ifyou do work wellwith people, you then must ask. In whatrelationship?

Some people work best as subordi-nates. General George Patton, the greatAmerican military hero of World War II,is a prime example. Patton was Amer-ica's top troop commander. Yet whenhe was proposed for an independentcommand. General George Marshall,the U.S. chief of staff-and probably themost successful picker of men in U.S.history - said, "Patton is the best sub-ordinate the American army has everproduced, but he would be the worstcommander."

Some people work best as team mem-bers. Others work best alone. Some areexceptionally talented as coaches andmentors; others are simply incompetentas mentors.

Another crucial question is. Do I pro-duce results as a decision maker or asan adviser? A great many people per-

form best as advisers but cannot takethe burden and pressure of making thedecision. A good many other people,bycontrast, need an adviser to force them-selves to think; then they can make de-cisions and act on them with speed, self-confidence, and courage.

This is a reason, by the way, that thenumber two person in an organizationoften fails when promoted to the num-ber one position. The top spot requiresa decision maker. Strong decision mak-ers often put somebody they trust intothe number two spot as their adviser-and in that position the person is out-standing. But in the number one spot,the same person fails. He or she knowswhat the decision should be but cannotaccept the responsibility of actuallymaking it.

Other important questions to ask in-clude. Do I perform well under stress, ordo 1 need a highly stmctured and pre-dictable environment? E>o I work best ina big organization or a small one? Fewpeople work well in all kinds of envi-ronments. Again and again, I have seenpeople who were very successful in largeorganizations flounder miserably whenthey moved into smaller ones. And thereverse is equally tme.

The conclusion bears repeating: Donot try to change yourself-you are un-likely to succeed. But work hard to im-prove the way you perform. And try notto take on work you cannot perform orwill only perform poorly.

What Are My Values?To be able to manage yourself, you fi-nally have to ask. What are my values?This is not a question of ethics. With re-spect to ethics, the rules are the same foreverybody, and the test is a simple one.I call it the "mirror test."

In the early years of this century, themost highly respected diplomat of allthe great powers was the German am-bassador in London. He was clearly des-tined for great things - to become hiscountry's foreign minister, at least, if notits federal chancellor. Yet in 1906 heabmptly resigned rather than presideover a dinner given by the diplomaticcorps for Edward VII. The king was a

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notorious womanizer and made it clearwhat kind of dinner he wanted. Theambassador is reported to have said,"1 refuse to see a pimp in the mirror inthe morning when 1 shave."

That is the mirror test. Ethics re-quires that you ask yourself. What kindof person do I want to see in the mirrorin the moming? What is ethical behav-ior in one kind of organization or situ-ation is ethical behavior in another.But ethics is only part of a value sys-tem - especially of an organization'svalue system.

To work in an organization whosevalue system is unacceptable or in-compatible with one's own condemnsa person both to frustration and tononperformance.

Consider the experience of a highlysuccessful human resources executivewhose company was acquired by a big-ger organization. After the acquisition,she was promoted to do the kind ofwork she did best, which included se-lecting people for important positions.The executive deeply believed that acompany should hire people for suchpositions from the outside only after ex-hausting all the inside possibilities. Buther new company believed in first look-ing outside "to bring in fresh blood."There is something to be said for bothapproaches - in my experience, theproper one is to do some of both. Theyare, however, fundamentally incompat-ible-not as policies but as values. Theybespeak different views ofthe relation-ship between organizations and people;different views of the responsibility ofan organization to its people and theirdevelopment; and different views of aperson's most important contributionto an enterprise. After several years offrustration, the executive quit - at con-siderable financial loss. Her values andthe values of the organization simplywere not compatible.

Similarly, whether a pharmaceuticalcompany tries to obtain results by mak-ing constant, smalt improvements or byachieving occasional, highly expensive,and risky "breakthroughs" is not pri-marily an economic question. The re-sults of either strategy may be pretty

much the same. At bottom, there is aconflict between a value system thatsees the company's contribution interms of helping physicians do betterwhat they already do and a value systemthat is oriented toward making scien-tific discoveries.

Whether a business should be runfor short-term results or with a focus on

What one does well -even very well andsuccessfully - may not fitwith one's value system.

the long term is likewise a question ofvalues. Financial analysts believe thatbusinesses can be run for both simul-taneously. Successful businesspeopleknow better. To be sure, every com-pany has to produce short-term results.But in any conflict between short-termresults and long-term growth, each com-pany wiil determine Its own priority.This is not primarily a disagreementabout economics. It is fundamentallya value conflict regarding the functionof a business and the responsibility ofmanagement.

Value confiicts are not limited to busi-ness organizations. One of the fastest-growing pastoral churches in the UnitedStates measures success by the numberof new parishioners. Its leadership be-lieves that what matters is how manynewcomers join the congregation. TheGood Lord wiil then minister to theirspiritual needs or at least to the needsof a sufficient percentage. Anotherpastoral, evangelical church believesthat what matters is people's spiritualgrowth. The church eases out new-comers who join but do not enter intoits spiritual life.

Again, this is not a matter of num-bers. At first glance, it appears that thesecond church grows more slowly. But itretains a far larger proportion of new-comers than the first one does. Itsgrowth, in other words, is more solid.This is also not a theological problem,or only secondarily so. It is a problemabout values. In a public debate, one

pastor argued, "Unless you first cometochurch,you will never find the gate tothe Kingdom of Heaven."

"No," answered the other. "Until youfirst look for the gate to the Kingdom ofHeaven, you don't belong in church."

Organizations, like people, have val-ues. To be effective in an organization,a person's values must be compatiblewith the organization's values. They donot need to be the same, but they mustbe close enough to coexist. Otherwise,the person will not only be frustratedbut aiso wiil not produce results.

A person's strengths and the waythat person performs rarely confiict; thetwo are complementary. But there issometimes a confiict between a per-son's values and his or her strengths.What one does well-even very well andsuccessfully - may not fit with one'svalue system. In that case, the workmay not appear to be worth devotingone's life to (or even a substantial por-tion thereof).

If I may, allow me to interject a per-sonal note. Many years ago, 1 too hadto decide between my values and whatI was doing successfully. I was doing verywell as a young investment banker inLondon in the mid-i93os, and the workclearly fit my strengths. Yet I did not seemyself making a contribution as anasset manager. People, I realized, werewhat I valued, and I saw no point inbeing the richest man in the cemetery.I had no money and no other job pros-pects. Despite the continuing Depres-sion, I quit-and it was the right thing todo. Values, in other words, are andshould be the ultimate test.

Where Do I Belong?A smal! number of people know veryearly where they belong. Mathemati-cians, musicians, and cooks, for instance,are usually mathematicians, musicians,and cooks by the time they are four orfive years oid. Physicians usually decideon their careers in their teens, if not ear-lier. But most people, especially highlygifted people, do not really know wherethey belong until they are well past theirmid-twenties. By that time, however,they should know the answers to the

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three questions: What are my strengths?How do I perform? and. What are myvalues? And then they can and shoulddecide where they belong.

Or rather, they should be able to de-cide where they do nof belong. The per-son who has learned that he or shedoes not perform well in a big organi-zation should have learned to say no toa position in one. The person who hasleamed that he or she is not a decisionmaker should have learned to say no toa decision-making assignment. A Gen-eral Patton (who probably never leamedthis himself) should have leamed to sayno to an independent command.

Equally important, knowing the an-swer to these questions enables a per-son to say to an opportunity, an offer, oran assignment, "Yes, I will do that. Butthis is the way I should be doing it. Thisis the way it should be structured. Thisis the way the relationships should be.These are the kind of results you shouldexpect from me, and in this time frame,because this is who I am."

Successful careers are not planned.They develop when people are preparedfor opportunities because they knowtheir strengths, their method of work,and their values. Knowing where onebelongs can transform an ordinary per-son - hardworking and competent butotherwise mediocre-into an outstand-ing performer.

What Should I Contribute?Throughout history, the great majorityof people never had to ask the question.What should 1 contribute? They weretold what to contribute, and their taskswere dictated either by the work itself-as it was for the peasant or artisan - orby a master or a mistress - as it was fordomestic servants. And until very re-cently, it was taken for granted thatmost people were subordinates who didas they were told. Even in the 1950s and1960s, the new knowledge workers (theso-called organization men) looked totheir company's personnel departmentto plan their careers.

Then in the late 1960s, no one wantedto be told what to do any longer. Youngmen and women began to ask. What do

/ want to do? And what they heard wasthat the way to contribute was to "doyour own thing." But this solution wasas wrong as the organization men's hadbeen. Very few of the people who be-lieved that doing one's own thing wouldlead to contribution, self-fulfillment, andsuccess achieved any of the three.

But still, there is no return to the oldanswer of doing what you are told orassigned to do. Knowledge workers inparticular have to leam to ask a ques-tion that has not been asked before:What should my contribution be? Toanswer it, they must address three dis-tinct elements: What does the situa-tion require? Given my strengths, myway of perfomiing, and my values, howcan 1 make the greatest contributionto what needs to be done? And finally.What results have to be achieved tomake a difference?

Consider the experience of a newlyappointed hospital administrator. Thehospital was big and prestigious, but ithad been coasting on its reputation for30 years. The new administrator decidedthat his contribution should be to es-

tablish a standard of excellence in oneimportant area within two years. Hechose to focus on the emergency room,which was big, visible, and sloppy. Hedecided that every patient who cameinto the ER had to be seen by a quali-fied nurse within 60 seconds. Within 12months, the hospital's emergency roomhad become a model for all hospitals inthe United States, and within anothertwo years, the whole hospital had beentransformed.

As this example suggests, it is rarelypossible -or even particularly fmitful -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 willmake a difference within the next yearand 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 not

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being ambitious; it is being foolish. Sec-ond, the results should be meaningful.They should make a difference. Finally,results should be visible and, if at allpossible, measurable. From this willcome a course of action: what to do,where and how to start, and what goalsand deadlines to set.

Responsibilityfor RelationshipsVery few people work by themselvesand achieve results by themselves - afew great artists, a few great scientists,a few great athletes. Most people workwith others and are effective with otherpeople. That is true whether they aremembers of an organization or inde-pendently employed. Managing your-self requires taking responsibility forrelationships. This has two parts.

The first is to accept the fact thatother people are as much individualsas you yourself are. They perversely in-sist on behaving like human beings.This means that they too have theirstrengths; they too have their ways ofgetting things done; they too have theirvalues. To be effective, therefore, youhave to know the strengths, the perfor-mance modes, and the values of yourCO workers.

That sounds obvious, but few peoplepay attention to it. Typical is the personwho was trained to write reports in hisor her first assignment because thatboss was a reader. Even if the next bossis a listener, the person goes on writingreports that, invariably, produce no re-sults. Invariably the boss will think theemployee is stupid, incompetent, andlazy, and he or she will fail. But thatcould have been avoided if the em-ployee had only looked at the new bossand analyzed how (/1/5 boss performs.

Bosses are neither a title on the orga-nization chart nor a"function."They areindividuals and are entitled to do theirwork in the way they do it best, it is in-cumbent on the people who work withthem to observe them, to find out howthey work, and to adapt themselves towhat makes their bosses most effective.This, in fact, is the secret of "managing"the boss.

The same holds true for all yourcoworkers. Each works his or her way,not your way. And each is entitled towork in his or her way. What matters iswhether they perform and what theirvalues are. As for how they perform -each is likely to do it differently. Thefirst secret of effectiveness is to under-stand the people you work with anddepend on so that you can make use oftheir strengths, their ways of working,and their values. Working relationshipsare as much based on the people asthey are on the work.

The second part of relationship re-sponsibility is taking responsibility forcommunication. Whenever I, or anyother consultant, start to work with anorganization, the first thing I hear aboutare all the personality conflicts. Most ofthese arise from the fact that people donot know what other people are doingand how they do their work, or what

who do these things must make surethat the marketing vice president un-derstands what they are trying to do,why they are trying to do it, how tbeyare going to do it, and what results toexpect.

If the marketing vice president doesnot understand what these high-gradeknowledge specialists are doing, it is pri-marily their fault, not hers. They havenot educated her. Conversely, it is themarketing vice president's responsibilityto make sure that all of her coworkersunderstand how she looks at market-ing: what her goals are, how she works,and what she exF>ects of herself and ofeach one of them.

Even people who understand the im-portance of taking responsibility for re-lationships often do not communicatesufficiently with their associates. Theyare afraid of being thought presumptu-ous or inquisitive or stupid. They are

The first secret of effectiveness is to understandthe people you work with so that you can makeuse of their strengths.

contribution the other people are con-centrating on and what results they ex-pect. And the reason they do not knowis that they have not asked and there-fore have not been told.

This failure to ask refiects human stu-pidity less than it refiects human his-tory. Until recently, it was unnecessaryto tell any ofthese things to anybody. Inthe medieval city, everyone in a districtplied the same trade. In the countryside,everyone in a valley planted the samecrop as soon as the frost was out of theground. Even those few people who didthings that were not "common" workedalone, so they did not have to tell any-one what they were doing.

Today the great majority of peoplework with others who have differenttasks and responsibilities. The market-ing vice president may have come out ofsales and know everything about sales,but she knows nothing about the thingsshe has never done-pricing, advertising,packaging, and the like. So the people

wrong. Whenever someone goes to hisor her associates and says,"This is whatI am good at. This is how I work. Theseare my values. This is the contribution Iplan to concentrate on and the resultsI should be expected to deliver," the re-sponse is always, "This is most helpful.But why didn't you tell me earlier?"

And one gets the same reaction -without exception, in my experience-ifone continues by asking, "And what doI need to know about your strengths,how you perform, your values, and yourproposed contribution?" In fact, knowl-edge workers should request this ofeveryone with whom they work, whetheras subordinate, superior, colleague, orteam member. And again, whenever thisis done, the reaction is always, "Thanksfor asking me. But why didn't you askme earlier?"

Organizations are no longer built onforce but on tmst. The existence of trustbetween people does not necessarilymean that they like one another. It

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means that they understand one an-other. Taking responsibility for rela-tionships is therefore an absolute ne-cessity. It is a duty. Whether one is amember of the organization, a consul-tant to it, a supplier, or a distributor, oneowes that responsibility to all one'scoworkers: those whose work one de-pends on as well as those who dependon one's own work.

The Second Half of Your Lifewhen work for most people meantmanual labor, there was no need toworry about the second half of your life.You simply kept on doing what you hadalways done. And if you were luckyenough to survive 40 years of hard workin the mill or on the railroad, you werequite happy to spend the rest of your lifedoing nothing. Today, however, mostwork is knowledge work, and knowl-edge workers are not "finished" after 40years on the job, they are merely bored.

We hear a great deal of talk aboutthe midlife crisis of the executive. It ismostly boredom. At 45, most executiveshave reached the peak of their busi-

ness careers, and they know it. After 20years of doing very much the same kindofwork,they are very good at their jobs.But they are not leaming or contribut-ing or deriving challenge and satisfac-tion from the job. And yet they are stilllikely to face another 20 if not 25 yearsof work. That is why managing oneselfincreasingly leads one to begin a secondcareer.

There are three ways to develop a sec-ond career. The first is actually to startone. Often this takes nothing more thanmoving from one kind of organizationto another: the divisional controller in alarge corporation, for instance, becomesthe controller of a medium-sized hospi-tal. But there are also growing numbersof people who move into different linesof work altogether: the business execu-tive or govemment official who entersthe ministry at 45, for instance; or themidlevel manager who leaves corporatelife after 20 years to attend law schooland become a small-town attomey.

We will see many more second ca-reers undertaken by people who haveachieved modest success in their first

jobs. Such people have substantial skills,and they know how to work. They needa community-the house is empty withthe children gone - and they need in-come as well. But above all, they needchallenge.

The second way to prepare for thesecond half of your life is to develop aparallel career. Many people who arevery successful in their first careers stayin the work they have been doing, eitheron a full-time or part-time or consultingbasis. But in addition, they create a par-allel job, usually in a nonprofit organi-zation, that takes another ten hours ofwork a week. They might take over theadministration of their church, for in-stance, or the presidency of the localGirl Scouts council. They might mn thebattered women's shelter, work as a chil-dren's librarian for the local public li-brary, sit on the school board, and so on.

Finally, there are the social entrepre-neurs. These are usually people whohave been very successful in their firstcareers. They love their work, but it nolonger challenges them. In many casesthey keep on doing what they have beendoing all along but spend less and less oftheir time on it. They also start anotheractivity, usually a nonprofit. My friendBob Buford, for example, built a verysuccessful television company that hestill runs. But he has also founded andbuilt a successful nonprofit organizationthat works with Protestant churches,and he is building another to teach so-cial entrepreneurs how to manage theirown nonprofit ventures while still run-ning their original businesses.

People who manage the second halfof their lives may aiways be a minority.The majority may "retire on the job"and count the years until their actualretirement. But it is this minority, themen and women who see a long work-ing-life expectancy as an opportunityboth for themselves and for society, whowill become leaders and models.

There is one prerequisite for man-aging the second half of your life: Youmust begin long before you enter it.When it first became clear 30 years agothat working-life expectancies werelengthening very fast, many observers

108 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

(including myself) believed that retiredpeople would increasingly become vol-unteers for nonprofit institutions. Thathas not happened. If one does not beginto volunteer before one is 40 or so, onewill not volunteer once past 60.

Similarly, ail the social entrepreneursI know began to work in their chosensecond enterprise long before theyreached their peak in their original busi-ness. Consider the example of a success-ful lawyer, the legal counsel to a largecorporation, who has started a ventureto establish model schools in his state.

torically, there was no such thing as"success." The overwhelming majorityof people did not expect anything but tostay in their "proper station," as an oldEnglish prayer has it. The only mobilitywas downward mobility.

In a knowledge society, however, weexpect everyone to be a success. This isclearly an impossibility. For a greatmany people, there is at best an absenceof failure. Wherever there is success,there has to be failure. And then it is vi-tally important for the individual, andequally for the individual's family, to

There is one prerequisite for managing thesecond half of your life: You must begin doing solong before you enter it.

He began to do volunteer legal work forthe schools when he was around 35. Hewas elected to the school board at age40. At age 50, when he had amassed afortune, he started his own enterprise tobuild and to run model schools. He is,however, still working nearly full-timeas the lead counsel in the company hehelped found as a young lawyer.

There is another reason to develop asecond major interest, and to develop itearly. No one can expect to live verylong without experiencing a serious set-back in his or her life or work. There isthe competent engineer who is passedover for promotion at age 45- There isthe competent college professor who re-alizes at age 42 that she will never get aprofessorship at a big university, eventhough she may be fully qualified for it.There are tragedies in one's family life:the breakup of one's marriage or theloss of a child. At such times, a secondmajor interest-not just a hobby-maymake all the difference. The engineer,for example, now knows that he has notbeen very successful in his job. But in hisoutside activity-as church treasurer, forexample - he is a success. One's familymay break up, but in that outside activ-ity there is stiil a community.

In a society in which success has be-come so terribly important, having op-tions will become increasingly vital. His-

JANUARY 2005

have an area in which he or she can con-tribute, make a difference, and be some-body That means finding a secondarea-whether in a second career, a par-allel career, or a social venture-that of-fers an opportunity for being a leader,for being respected, for being a success.

The challenges of managing oneselfmay seem obvious, if not elementary.And the answers may seem self-evidentto the point of appearing naive. Butmanaging oneself requires new and un-precedented things from the individual,and especially from the knowledgeworker. In effect, managing oneself de-mands that each knowledge workerthink and behave like a chief executiveofficer. Further, the shift from manualworkers who do as they are told toknowledge workers who have to man-age themselves profoundly challengessocial stmcture. Every existing society,even the most individualistic one, takestwo things for granted, if only subcon-sciously: that organizations outlive work-ers, and that most people stay put

But today the opposite is true. Knowl-edge workers outlive organizations, andthey are mobile. The need to manageoneself is therefore creating a revolu-tion in human affairs. ^

Reprint R0501K; HBR OnPoint 4444To order, see page 119.

" f̂eu will never again see your competition In

quite the same light The authors present a

compeiiing case for pursuing s t r a t a wrth a

creative, not combative, approach."

Carlos Ghosn, President and CEO. NissanMotor Co., Ltd.

jEFFitEr F mm\ 1 KRNUD J. JAWDRSKI

lAit lTmluai>le ffiUe to understanding

the nature of the massive technological

transformatton underway."

MiChaei E. Porter, Bistiop William LawrenceUnlveF5ity Professor, Harvard Uniwrsity

-The iessons and compelling examples of this

thoughtfut booit wiii be indispensabie for ai

business leaders."

John Ward, Clinical Professor and Co-Director, Centerfor Family Enterprises, Kellogg School of Mar«gement

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