45

Managing Oneself

This chapter deals with the new demands on the individual knowledge
worker. The very great achievers, a Napoleon, a Leonardo da Vinci, a
Mozart, have always man- aged themselves. This, in large measure, made
them great achievers. But they were the rarest of exceptions. And they were
so unusual, both in their talents and in their achievements, as to be considered
outside the boundaries of normal human existence. Now even people of modest
endowments, that is, average mediocrities, have to learn to manage
themselves.
Knowledge workers, therefore, face drastically new demands:

1. They have to ask, Who am I? What are my strengths? How do I work?

2. They have to ask, Where do I belong?

3. They have to ask, What is my contribution?

4. They have to take relationship responsibility.

1. WHAT ARE MY STRENGTHS?

Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong.
People more often know what they are not good at—and even there, people
are more often wrong than right. And yet, one can perform only with one’s
strengths. One cannot build performance on weaknesses, let alone on
something one cannot do at all.
For the great majority of people, to know their strengths was irrelevant
only a few decades ago. One was born into a job and into a line of work. The
peasant’s son became a peasant. If he was not good at being a peasant, he
failed. The artisan’s son was similarly going to be an artisan, and so on. But
now people have choices. They therefore have to know their strengths so
that they can know where they belong.
There is only one way to find out: feedback analysis. Whenever one
makes a key decision and whenever one takes a key action, one writes down
what one expects
 Managing Oneself 482

will happen. And nine months or twelve months later, one then feeds back
from results to expectations.
This is by no means a new method. It was invented sometime in the
fourteenth century, by an otherwise totally obscure German theologian. Some
150 years later, John Calvin (1509–1564), father of Calvinism, in Geneva,
and Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), the founder of the Jesuit Order, quite
independent of each other, picked up the idea and incorporated it into their
rules for every member of their group—that is, for the Calvinist pastor and
the Jesuit priest. This explains why these two new institutions (both founded
in the same year, in 1536) had within thirty years come to dominate Europe:
Calvinism, the Protestant north; the Jesuit Order, the Catholic south. By that
time each group contained so many thousands of clerics that most of them
had to be ordinary rather than exceptional. Many of them worked alone, if
not in complete isolation. Many of them had to work under- ground and in
constant fear of persecution. Yet very few defected. The routine feedback
from results to expectations reaffirmed them in their commitment. It enabled
them to focus on performance and results, and with it, on achievement and
satisfaction.
Within a fairly short period of time, maybe two or three years, this simple
pro- cedure will tell people, first, where their strengths are—and this is
probably the most important thing to know about oneself. It will also show
them what they do or fail to do that deprives them of the full yield from their
strengths. It will show them where they are not particularly competent. And,
finally, it will show them where they have no strengths and cannot perform.
Several action conclusions follow from the feedback analysis. The first,
and most important, conclusion: Concentrate on your strengths. Place
yourself where your strengths can produce performance and results.
Second: Work on improving your strengths. The feedback analysis rapidly
shows where a person needs to improve skills or has to acquire new
knowledge. It will show where skills and knowledge are no longer adequate
and have to be updated. It will also show the gaps in one’s knowledge.
Of particular importance is the third conclusion: the feedback analysis
soon identifies the areas where intellectual arrogance causes disabling
ignorance. Far too many people—especially people with high knowledge in
one area—are contemp- tuous of knowledge in other areas. Feedback
analysis soon shows that a main rea- son for poor performance is the result of
simply not knowing enough or the result of being contemptuous of
knowledge outside one’s own specialty.
First-rate engineers may take pride in not knowing anything about people
— human beings are much too disorderly for the good engineering mind.
And ac- countants, too, may think it unnecessary to know about people.
Human resources people, by contrast, often pride themselves on their ignorance
 Managing Oneself 483

of elementary accounting or of quantitative methods altogether. Brilliant

execu- tives who are being posted abroad often believe that business skill is
sufficient, and dismiss learning about the history, the arts, the culture, and
the traditions of the country where they are now expected to perform—only
to find that their bril- liant business skills produce no results.
One important action conclusion from the feedback analysis is, thus, to
over- come intellectual arrogance and work on acquiring the skills and
knowledge needed to make one’s strengths fully productive.
Another equally important action conclusion is to remedy one’s bad
habits— things one does or fails to do that inhibit effectiveness and
performance. They quickly show up in the feedback analysis.
The analysis may show, for instance, that a planner’s beautiful plans die
because he or she does not follow through. Like so many brilliant people, he
or she believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains;
ideas show where the bulldozers have to go to work. The most brilliant
planners far too often stop when the plan is completed. But that is when the
work begins. Then the planner needs to find the people to carry out the plan,
explain the plan to them, teach them, adapt and change the plan as it moves
from planning to doing and, finally, decide when to stop pushing the plan.
But the analysis may also show that a person fails to obtain results
because he or she lacks manners. Bright people—especially bright young
people—often do not understand that good manners are the “lubricating oil”
of an organization.
It is a law of nature that two moving bodies in contact with each other
create friction. Two human beings in contact with each other therefore always
create fric- tion. And then manners are the lubricating oil that enable these
two moving bod- ies to work together, whether they like each other or not—
simple things like saying “please” and “thank you” and knowing a person’s
birthday or name, and remembering to ask after the person’s family. If the
analysis shows that brilliant work fails again and again as soon as it requires
cooperation from others, it prob- ably indicates a lack of courtesy, that is, of
manners.
The next action conclusion from the feedback analysis is what not to do.
Feeding back from results to expectations soon shows where a person
should not try to do anything at all. It shows the areas in which a person
lacks the mini- mum endowment needed—and there are always many such
areas for any person. Not enough people have even one first-rate skill or
knowledge area, but all of us have an infinite number of areas in which we
have no talent, no skill, and little chance to become even mediocre. And in
these areas a person—especially a knowl- edge worker—should not take on
work, jobs, assignments.
The final action conclusion is to waste as little effort as possible on
 Managing Oneself 484
improving areas of low competence. Concentration should be on areas of high
competence and
 Managing Oneself 485

high skill. It takes far more energy and far more work to improve from
incompetence to low mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate
performance to excellence. And yet most people—and equally most teachers
and most organizations—try to concentrate on making an incompetent person
into a low mediocrity. The time, en- ergy, and resources should instead go into
making a competent person into a star performer.

How Do I Perform?
How do I perform? is as important a question—especially for knowledge
work- ers—as, What are my strengths?
In fact, it may be an even more important question. Amazingly few
people know how they get things done. On the contrary, most of us do not
even know that different people work and perform differently. We therefore
work in ways that are not our ways—and that almost guarantees
nonperformance.
The main reason, perhaps, that so many people do not know how they
perform is that schools throughout history insisted, out of necessity, on there
being only one way for everybody to do his or her schoolwork. The teacher
who ran a class- room of forty youngsters simply did not have the time to
find out how each of the students performed. The teacher, on the contrary,
had to insist that all do the same work, the same way, at the same time. And
so, historically, everybody grew up with one way of doing the work. Here
perhaps is where our new technology may have the greatest and most
beneficial impact. It should enable even the merely competent teacher to find
out how a student learns and then to encourage the stu- dent to do the work
the way that fits that individual student.
Like one’s strengths, how one performs is individual. It is personality.
Whether personality derives from “nature” or “nurture,” it surely is formed
long before the person goes to work. And how a person performs is a “given,”
just as what a person is good at or not good at is a “given.” It can be
modified, but it is unlikely to be changed. And just as people produce results
by doing what they are good at, peo- ple produce results by working
according to how they perform.
The feedback analysis may indicate that there is something amiss in how
one performs. But rarely does it identify the cause. It is, however, normally
not too dif- ficult to find out. It takes a few years of work experience. And
then one can ask—and quickly answer—how one performs. For a few
common personality traits usually determine how one achieves results.

AM I A READER OR A LISTENER?
The first thing to know about how one performs is whether one is a reader or
a listener. Yet very few people even know that there are readers and there
 Managing Oneself 486
are listeners, and that very few people are both. Even fewer know which
of the
 Managing Oneself 487

two they themselves are. But a few examples will show how damaging it is
not to know.
When he was commander in chief of the Allied Forces in Europe, General
Dwight (Ike) Eisenhower was the darling of the press, and attendance at one
of his press conferences was considered a rare treat. These conferences were
famous for their style, for Eisenhower’s total command of whatever question
was being asked, and, equally, for his ability to describe a situation or to
explain a policy in two or three beautifully polished and elegant sentences.
Ten years later, President Eisen- hower was held in open contempt by his
former admirers. They considered him a buffoon. He never, they complained,
even addressed himself to the question asked, but rambled on endlessly about
something else. And he was constantly ridiculed for butchering the King’s
English in his incoherent and ungrammatical answers. Yet Eisenhower had
in large measure owed his brilliant earlier career to his virtu- oso
performance as a speechwriter for General Douglas MacArthur, one of the
most demanding stylists in American public life.
The explanation: Eisenhower apparently did not know himself that he was
a reader and not a listener. When he was commander in chief in Europe, his
aides had made sure that every question from the press was handed in in
writing at least half an hour before the conference began. And then
Eisenhower was in total com- mand. When he became president, he
succeeded two listeners, Franklin D. Roos- evelt and Harry Truman. Both
men knew this and both enjoyed free-for-all press conferences. Roosevelt
knew himself to be so much of a listener that he insisted that everything first
be read out loud to him—only then did he look at anything in writing. And
when Truman realized, after becoming president, that he needed to learn
about foreign and military affairs—neither of which he had ever been much
interested in before—he arranged for his two ablest cabinet members, Gen-
eral George Marshall and Dean Acheson, to give him a daily tutorial in
which each delivered a forty-minute spoken presentation, after which the
president asked questions. Eisenhower, apparently, felt that he had to do what
his two famous pre- decessors had done. As a result, he never even heard the
question the journalists asked. And he was not even an extreme case of a
nonlistener.
A few years later Lyndon B. Johnson destroyed his presidency, in large
measure, by not knowing that he—unlike Eisenhower—was a listener. His
predecessor, John F. Kennedy, who knew that he was a reader, had
assembled as his assistants a brilliant group of writers such as Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr., the historian, and Bill Moyers, a first-rate journalist.
Kennedy made sure that they first wrote to him before discussing their
memos in person. Johnson kept these people as his staff— and they kept on
writing. He never, apparently, got one word of what they wrote. Yet, as a
 Managing Oneself 488
senator, Johnson, only four years earlier, had been superb; for parliamen-
tarians have to be, above all, listeners.
 Managing Oneself 489

Only a century ago, very few people, even in the most highly developed
coun- try, knew whether they were right-handed or left-handed. Left-handers
were sup- pressed. Few actually became competent right-handers. Most of
them ended up as incompetent no-handers and with severe emotional
damage such as stuttering.
Yet, just as few left-handers became competent right-handers, few listeners
can be made, or can make themselves, into competent readers—and vice
versa. The listener who tries to be a reader will, therefore, suffer the fate of
Lyndon Johnson, while the reader who tries to be a listener will suffer the
fate of Dwight Eisen- hower. They will underperform or underachieve.

HOW DO I LEARN?
The second thing to know about how one performs is to know how one
learns. There things may be even worse than they are with respect to readers
and listeners. For schools everywhere are organized on the assumption that there
is one right way to learn, and that it is the same way for everybody.
Many first-class writers—Winston Churchill is but one example—do
poorly in school, and they tend to remember their school as pure torture. Yet
few of their classmates have the same memory of the same school and the
same teachers; they may not have enjoyed the school very much, but the
worst they suffered was bore- dom. The explanation is that first-rate writers
do not, as a rule, learn by listening and reading. They learn by writing. Since
this is not the way the school allows them to learn, they get poor grades. And
to be forced to learn the way the school teaches is sheer hell for them and
pure torture.
Here are a few examples of different ways in which people learn.
Beethoven left behind an enormous number of sketchbooks. Yet he himself
said that he never looked at a sketchbook when he actually wrote his
compositions. When asked, “Why, then, do you keep a sketchbook?” he is
reported to have an- swered, “If I don’t write it down immediately, I forget it
right away. If I put it into a sketchbook I never forget it, and I never have to
look it up again.”
Alfred Sloan—the man who built General Motors into the world’s largest,
and for sixty years the world’s most successful, manufacturing company—
conducted most of his management business in small and lively meetings.
As soon as a meeting was over, Sloan went to his office and spent several
hours composing a letter to one of the meeting’s participants, in which he
brought out the key ques- tions discussed in the meeting, the issues the
meeting raised, the decisions it reached, and the problems it uncovered but
did not solve. When complimented on these letters, he is reported to have
said, “If I do not sit down immediately after the meeting and think through
what it actually was all about, and then put it down in writing, I will have
 Managing Oneself 490
forgotten it within twenty-four hours. That’s why I write these letters.”
 Managing Oneself 491

A chief executive officer who, in the 1950s and 1960s, converted what
was a small and mediocre family firm into the world’s leading company in
its industry, was in the habit of calling his entire senior staff into his office,
usually once a week, having them sit in a half-circle around his desk, and
then talking at them for two or three hours. He very rarely asked these
people for their comments or their questions. He argued with himself. He
raised the possibility of a policy move—for instance, acquisition of a small
and failing company in the industry that had, however, some special
technology. He always took three different posi- tions on every one of these
questions: one in favor of the move, one against the move, and one on the
conditions under which such a move might make sense. He needed an
audience to hear himself talk. It was the way he learned. And again, while a
fairly extreme case, he was by no means an unusual one. Successful trial
lawyers learn the same way; so do many medical diagnosticians.
There are probably half a dozen different ways to learn. There are people
who learn by taking copious notes—the way Beethoven did. But Alfred
Sloan never took a note in a meeting, nor did the CEO mentioned above. There
are people who learn by hearing themselves talk. There are people who learn
by writing. There are people who learn by doing. And in an (informal) survey I
once took of professors in American universities who successfully publish
scholarly books of wide appeal, I was told again and again, “To hear myself
talk is the reason why I teach; because then I can write.”
Actually, of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, this is one of the
easiest to acquire. When I ask people, “How do you learn?” most of them
know it. But when I then ask, “Do you act on this knowledge?” few do. And
yet to act on this knowledge is the key to performance—or rather, not to act
on this knowledge is to condemn oneself to nonperformance.
“How do I perform?” and “How do I learn?” are the most important first
ques- tions to ask. But they are by no means the only ones. To manage
oneself, one has to ask, “Do I work well with people, or am I a loner?” And if
one finds out that one works well with people, one then asks, “In what
relationship do I work well with people?”
Some people work best as subordinates. The prime example is the great
Amer- ican military hero of World War II, General George Patton. He was
America’s top troop commander. Yet, when he was proposed for an
independent command, General George Marshall, the American chief of staff
—and probably the most successful picker of men in American history—
said, “Patton is the best subordi- nate the American Army has ever
produced, but he would be the worst com- mander.”
Some people work best as team members. Some people work exceedingly
well as coaches and mentors, and some people are simply incompetent to be
mentors.
 Managing Oneself 492

Another important thing to know about how one performs is whether one
per- forms well under stress or whether one needs a highly structured and
predictable environment.
Also, does one work best as a minnow in a big organization, or best as a
big fish in a small organization? Few people work well in both situations.
Again and again people who have been very successful in a large
organization—for exam- ple, the General Electric Company or Citibank—
flounder miserably when they move into a small organization. And again
and again people who perform bril- liantly in a small organization flounder
miserably when they take a job with a big organization.
Another crucial question: “Do I produce results as a decision maker or as
an adviser?” A great many people perform best as advisers, but cannot take
the bur- den and pressure of the decision. A good many people, by contrast,
need an adviser to force them to think, but then they can take the decision and
act on it with speed, self-confidence, and courage. This is a reason why the
number-two person in an organization often fails when promoted into the
top spot. The top spot re- quires a decision maker. Strong decision makers in
the top spot often put some- body whom they trust into the number-two spot
as their adviser—and in that position, that person is outstanding. But when
then promoted into the number- one spot, the person fails. He or she knows
what the decision should be but cannot take decision-making responsibility.
The action conclusion: Again, do not try to change yourself—it is
unlikely to be successful. But work, and hard, to improve the way you
perform. And try not to do work of any kind in a way in which you do not
perform or perform poorly.

What Are My Values?

To be able to manage oneself, one has to know, finally, the answer to, “What
are my values?” With respect to ethics, the rules are the same for everybody,
and the test is a simple one—I call it the “mirror test.”
As the story goes, the most highly respected diplomat among all those of
the Great Powers in the early years of the twentieth century was the German
ambas- sador in London. He was clearly destined for higher things, at least
to become his country’s foreign minister, if not German federal chancellor.
Yet, in 1906, he abruptly resigned. King Edward VII had then been on the
British throne for five years, and the diplomatic corps had been planning to
give him a big dinner. The German ambassador, being the dean of the
diplomatic corps—he had been in London for close to fifteen years—was to
be the chairman of that dinner. King Edward VII was a notorious womanizer
and made it clear what kind of dinner he wanted—at the end, after the
dessert had been served, a huge cake was going to appear, and out of it
would jump a dozen or more naked prostitutes as the lights
 Managing Oneself 493

were dimmed. The German ambassador resigned rather than preside over this
din- ner: “I refuse to see a pimp in the mirror in the morning when I shave.”
This is the mirror test. What ethics requires is to ask oneself, “What kind
of person do I want to see when I shave myself [or put on my lipstick] in the
morn- ing?” Ethics, in other words, are a clear value system. And they do
not vary much—what is ethical behavior in one kind of organization or
situation is ethical behavior in another kind of organization or situation.
But ethics are only a part of a value system and only a part, especially, of
the value system of an organization.
To work in an organization whose value system is unacceptable to a
person or incompatible with the person’s own values, condemns that person both
to frustration and to nonperformance.
Here are some examples of values people have to learn about themselves.
A brilliant and highly successful executive found herself totally frustrated
after her old company was acquired by a bigger one. She actually got a big
promo- tion—and a promotion into doing the kind of work she did best. It
was part of her job to select people for important positions. She deeply
believed that one hired people from the outside into important positions only
after having exhausted all inside possibilities. The company in which she now
found herself as senior human- resources executive believed, however, that in
staffing an important position that had become vacant, one first looked at the
outside, “to bring in fresh blood.” There is something to be said for either way
(though, in my experience, the proper way is to do some of both). But they
are fundamentally incompatible, not as policies, but as values. They bespeak
a different view of the relationship between organization and people; a
different view of the responsibility of an organization to its people and with
respect to developing them; a different view of what is the most impor- tant
contribution of a person to an enterprise; and so on. After several years of
frustration, the human-resources executive quit, at considerable financial
loss to herself. Her values and the values of the organization simply were not
compatible. Similarly, the question of whether to try to obtain results in a
pharmaceutical company by making constant, small improvements or by
occasional, highly expen- sive and risky “breakthroughs” is not primarily an
economic question. The results of either strategy may be pretty much the
same. It is at bottom a conflict of values— between a value system that sees
the contribution of a pharmaceutical company as helping the already
successful physician to do better at what he or she already does
well, and a value system that is “science” oriented.
It is, similarly, a value question whether a business should be run for short-
term results or for “the long run.” Financial analysts believe that businesses can
be run for both, simultaneously. Successful businessmen know better. To be
sure, everyone has to produce short-term results. But in any conflict between
 Managing Oneself 494
short-term results and
 Managing Oneself 495

long-term growth, one company decides in favor of long-term growth, another

com- pany decides such a conflict in favor of short-term results. Again, this is
not primar- ily a disagreement on economics. It is fundamentally a value
conflict regarding the function of a business and the responsibility of
management.
In one of the fastest-growing pastoral churches in the United States,
success is being measured by the number of new parishioners. It is believed
that what mat- ters is how many people join, and become regular
churchgoers, who never before came to church. The Good Lord, this church
believes, will then take care of the spiritual needs of a sufficient number of
parishioners. Another pastoral, evangeli- cal church believes that what
matters is the spiritual experience of people. It will ease out newcomers who
join the church but who then do not enter into the spiri- tual life of the
church.
Again, this is not a matter of numbers. At first glance, it appears that the
second church grows more slowly. But it retains a far larger proportion of
newcomers than the first one does. Its growth, in other words, is far more
solid. This is also not a theological problem, or only secondarily so. It is a
value problem. One of the two pastors said in a public debate, “Unless you first
come to church, you will never find the Gate to the Kingdom of Heaven.”
“No,” answered the other one. “Until you first look for the Gate to the
Kingdom of Heaven, you don’t belong in church.”
Organizations have to have values. But so do people. To be effective in
an or- ganization, one’s own values must be compatible with the
organization’s values. They do not need to be the same. But they must be
close enough so that they can coexist. Otherwise, the person will be
frustrated, but also the person will not produce results.

What to Do in a Value Conflict

There rarely is a conflict between a person’s strengths and the way that
person performs. The two are complementary. But there is sometimes a
conflict between a person’s values and the same person’s strengths. What one
does well—even very well—and successfully may not fit with one’s value
system. It may not appear to that person as making a contribution and
something to which to devote one’s life (or even a substantial portion thereof
).
If I may inject a personal note: I, too, many years ago, had to decide
between what I was doing well and successfully, and my values. I was doing
extremely well as a young investment banker in London in the mid-1930s; it
clearly fit my strengths. Yet I did not see myself making a contribution as an
asset manager of any kind. People, I realized, were my values. And I saw no
point in being the rich- est man in the cemetery. I had no money, no job in a
 Managing Oneself 496
deep Depression, and no prospects. But I quit—and it was the right thing.
Values, in other words, are and should be the ultimate test.
 Managing Oneself 497

2. 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.
Mathemati- cians, 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, however, 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 deci- sion-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 knowing the answer to these three questions also 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.

3. 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 contribute?” 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
 Managing Oneself 498
most people were subordi- nates who did as they were told.
 Managing Oneself 499

The advent of the knowledge worker is changing this, and fast.

Knowledge workers will have to learn to address the question, “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 of this I know of is the way Harry Truman repositioned
him- self 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 United States would return to an
almost exclusive concern with do- mestic 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 Winston Churchill on one side and Joseph Stalin on the other, and re-
alized, 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, concentrate on foreign affairs. He
immediately put himself into school with General George 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 West- ern Europe; with
the decision to rebuild Japan; and finally, with the call for world- wide
economic development.
By contrast, Lyndon Johnson lost both the Vietnam War and his domestic
poli- cies 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 domestic affairs. He,
too, came into the presidency wanting to complete what the New Deal had
left unfin- ished. 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
 Managing Oneself 500
circumstances—is not being “ambitious.” It is being foolish. At the same
time, results should be meaningful.
 Managing Oneself 501

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 my contribution be?” 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 Cen- ter—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, and measurements in a
hospital—and within another two years, the whole hospital had been trans-
formed.
The decision that answers “What should my contribution be?” thus
balances three elements. First comes the question, “What does the
situation require?” Then comes the question, “How could I make the
greatest contribution with my strengths, my way of performing, my
values, to what needs to be done?” Finally, there is the question, “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 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.

4. 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.
 Managing Oneself 502
The first one is to accept the fact that other people are as much individuals as one
 Managing Oneself 503

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
therefore has to know the strengths, the performance modes, and the values of
the people one works with.
This sounds obvious. But too 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 lis- tener. But these people keep on writing reports to the new boss—the
way Presi- dent 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, and lazy. They be- come failures. All that would have been
needed to avoid this would have been to take 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
indi- viduals 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 themselves to the way the bosses are effective (a
full discussion of “managing the boss” is contained, next, in chapter 46).
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 in writing to him or talking to him until he had first
spent time with the figures. They went in and presented their reports. Then
they left the fig- ures. 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 pre- sentation 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, “What are his or her strengths? How does he
or she do the work and per- form? What are his or her values?”
One does the same with all the people one works with. Each of them
works his or her 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 per- form—each is likely to do it differently. The first secret
of effectiveness is to un- derstand the people with whom one works and on
whom one depends, and to make use of their strengths, their ways of
working, and their values. For working relations are as much based on the
 Managing Oneself 504
person as they are based on the work.
 Managing Oneself 505

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 mes- sage, that is, in a memo if they are readers, or by talking
to them if they are listeners, and so on.
Most of the “personality conflicts” in organizations 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
un- necessary 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. 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
profes- sionals, 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.
The marketing vice president may have come out of sales and know
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. Those who work under her must make sure that the
marketing vice presi- dent 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
mar- keting vice president. They have not told her. They have not educated
her. Con- versely, 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
 Managing Oneself 506
and of every one of them.
 Managing Oneself 507

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 re- sults 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 if one then asks, “And what do I need to
know about your strengths, how you perform, your values, and your proposed
contribu- tion?”
In fact, a knowledge worker should request of people with whom he or
she works—whether as subordinates, superiors, colleagues, 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 done, the reaction of the
other person will be, “Thanks for telling me. It’s enormously helpful. But
why didn’t you ask me ear- lier?”
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 presupposes that people understand one
another. Taking re- lationship responsibility is therefore an absolute necessity. It
is a duty. Whether one is a member of the organization, a consultant to it, a
supplier to it, a distributor, one owes relationship responsibility to everyone
with whom one works, on whose work one depends, and who, in turn,
depends on one’s own work.

SUMMARY
The workforce has changed fundamentally in its life expectancy, but above
all in its composition and work. It has become a knowledge workforce. And
there- fore to have even a chance of success and achievement, knowledge
workers have to do something totally new and totally unprecedented. They
have to manage themselves, and this creates new demands on the individual.
First, they must understand what they do well—that is, their strengths.
Feedback analysis is a tool used by many successful executives to
understand their strengths. They must also understand the most effective
way in which they work. Once the knowledge worker understands her
strengths and work style, the next demand is that she understand her values.
One tends to do best when applying one’s strengths in areas that one values.
Then the knowledge worker is able to deter- mine where to try to place
himself or herself as opportunities present them- selves.
 Managing Oneself 508

Once in an organization, the knowledge worker must ask, “Given my strengths

and values, where can I make the greatest contribution to the needs of this organi-
zation?” Finally, the knowledge worker must take responsibility for the relation-
ships required to make the contribution. Relationship responsibility requires asking
and answering the same questions about those with whom one works and adapting
oneself to the strengths and work styles of associates.