Managing Oneself Summary

Managing Oneself Summary By Peter Drucker

Today the book summary I am going to talk about is Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker. Before starting the Managing Oneself summary would like to talk about Peter’s achievements. Peter Drucker born on November 19, 1909, was an Austrian born American management consultant, educator and author, whose writing contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation. He also won a presidential medal of freedom.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Blog Title: Managing Oneself Summary By Peter Drucker
Name: Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics)
Author: Peter Drucker
Download Audio Book For Free at: Audible
Book available in English at: Flipkart, Amazon
Book size: 64 pages

Overview:

Peter has written many books, such as The effective executive, management task responsibilities practices, the essential Drucker, and many more

The book summary I am going to share today is an amazing book especially for the beginners, who want to start reading. It is an easy to read book and simple to understand and very useful.

Managing Oneself summary
Managing Oneself

In Managing Oneself book, Peter explains that we live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: With talent, ambition, desire and drive you can reach the top of the profession regardless of where you started out, But we should always need to understand that with opportunities come responsibilities. Today companies aren’t managing their workers career but it is you who needs to make your place in the world and should know when to change your course and it is you who needs to make yourself productive during your career. You must be your responsible for yourself. You must learn to manage yourself because it is you who will decide your career.

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In this book, Peter also helped us to understand how we can manage ourselves and how we can have a productive career that may span 50 years. in this book, Peter also explained how we can think and plan for the second career beyond the age of 40 along, by giving us references and examples of people who had made their second career after the age of 40.

The points peter Drucker included in his book, to make us understand more clearly the concept of Managing Oneself are:

  1. What are my strengths?
  2. How do I perform
  3. What are my values?
  4. How should I contribute
  5. Responsibilities
  6. Second half of your career?

So let’s begin with Managing Oneself summary:

Managing Oneself Summary Chapter 1: What are my strengths?

To be successful in your career, you must understand your strength, you must know what is your strength, you can’t grow in your career by knowing your weaknesses. You will grow only when you know what is your strength, because knowing your strength will help you to know where are the possibilities to grow, and this will help you to find out the right opportunities.

Most of the people fail because they don’t know about their weakness and strength. They are wrong about their own perspective.

For this point, Peter Drucker Recommends FEEDBACK ANALYSIS For your Career, SO THAT YOU CAN UNDERSTAND YOUR STRENGTH MORE NICELY AND PROPERLY,

  • Write down expected outcomes for your key decisions and actions. And evaluate them or compare them after 9 to 12 months.
  • Action plan, while analyzing one will understand what are the things they are lacking and what all things they should do to improve.

Like, try to concentrate on things where your strength can produce a result, work harder to improve your strength, don’t be arrogant- try to gain more skill and knowledge, identify what not to do, have no lack of manners, and avoid bad habits etc.

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Managing Oneself Summary Chapter 2: How do I perform?

Just like one’s strength, how person perform is also unique and different, personality can be a matter of nature or nurture, you can improve at any point of time, your personality forms very before, even before you start working, You can achieve by working on something you are good at and also achieve results by working in the ways they perform their best, person performance depends on in which thing person is good at or in which thing person isn’t good?

If you want to know how you perform ask some questions to yourself, which Peter has explained in this point

AM I A READER OR A LISTENER?

Are you good at listening or reading, you learn easily while reading or listening?

Would you like to prepare yourself for any meeting, debate or presentation through writing, reading or listening?

How well will I work? I am good working with the team or I work more nicely when I am alone?

Do I perform better when I am under pressure or when I am at the comfortable environment?

Do I like working in a big organization or small one?

Am I good in producing a result as a decision maker or as an advisor?

Am I comfortable learning things through reading, writing or listening or combination of two things?

Try to understand yourself more properly, try to improve on things you think you can perform nicely, and try to avoid things you think you will perform badly, and work hard put more efforts to improve the way you perform.

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Managing Oneself Summary Chapter 3: What are my values?

Here Peter Drucker is talking about what you see yourself in a mirror, for making us understand this more properly Peter Drucker has referred it as MIRROR TEST.

Like what kind of person you want to see in a mirror

Personal Values, your values must be compatible with that of the organizations,

And just like individuals, even Organizations have values, and your values must match with organizations value so that an individual can enjoy the work they do.

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Managing Oneself Summary Chapter 4: Where do I belong?

In this point Peter says, that successful careers get developed, when people prepare for their opportunities because they know what are their strength, how they should work and perform and what are their values. An individual must decide early where they belong and what they want to be, you can do this by asking yourself three questions and those questions are:

What are my strengths?

How do I perform?

What are my values?

And when you have an answer to all these questions then you will definitely come to know, where you exactly belong, and also understands where you don’t belong? And one should understand where they find their growth and where they are comfortable to work?

Read More: How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing with People – Book Summary

Managing Oneself Summary Chapter 5: How should I contribute?

This point makes us understand, that usually, people take task which is given to them and which they are expected to do, instead, they should analyze that task and situation and should look out ways in which they can make a contribution and can make the real difference,

For understanding it more clearly Peter said to answer following questions?

  • Ask yourself what does this situation requires at this point of time?
  • With my strength, values, and methods, what are the great contributions I can make for the given task?
  • What results need to be achieved to make a real difference?

As you get the answer for the above question, not much long but try to create a plan for 18 months, 18 months is achievable, and the result which must be achieved should be meaningful, visible and measurable.

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Managing Oneself Summary Chapter 6: Responsibility

Here responsibility means an individuals responsibility towards relationships. Very few people work for themselves and most people work with others and for others. Hence it is everyone’s responsibility to understand the importance of their relationship with others.

There are two parts of responsibility towards relationship,

  • First part talks about the responsibility to consider that others are human beings, so try to understand their strength, values and their way of performance, wither they are your boss or co-workers try to understand them and try to understand that they are different and their values, strength and performance will be different as well.
  • The second part talks about responsibility for communication. Many organization face the personality conflict or difference between employees. The people working together don’t understand each other, don’t understand each other way of performances which results in a difference between the coworkers. Hence it is important for every individual to take a responsibility to communicate and to make each other understand their strength, values and performance level because unless you don’t communicate, people will not understand how different you and your working levels are from them. And as you make them understand they feel better and comfortable to work with you.”

Read More: The SPEED of Trust By Stephen M.R. Covey – Book Summary

Managing Oneself Summary Chapter 7: Second half of your career:

In this very few prepare their second career, but those who do that they are the actual leader and role model, because they have reached the top of the ladder in their career and have gained a lot of knowledge through which they become the inspiration for others, and helps other to grow, and they are very few can say a minority, and majority people will take retirement from their career,

The second career helps one to be focused when they are having a tough time in their lives and help to contribute to making the actual difference.

Managing Oneself book helps us to understand that we need to be responsible for ourselves. We need to understand our strength, values and need to understand where we can perform better and can give the best result. We must look for the opportunities where we can see ourselves growing.

From The book Managing Oneself

“IT TAKES FAR MORE ENERGY AND WORK TO IMPROVE FROM INCOMPETENCE TO MEDIOCRITY THAN IT TAKES TO IMPROVE FROM FIRST-RATE PERFORMANCE TO EXCELLENCE.”

Download Audio Book For Free at: Audible
Book available in English at: Flipkart, Amazon

This is the end of Managing Oneself Summary. I Would suggest reading this book ones, especially if you are a beginner, it’s an easy to read book. And if you want me to make a video for this book, then do leave a comment. Do share your views about this book summary.

Thank you

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9 Comments

  1. Dear Friend
    Book is helpful for our lives but it will be more understanding once u made video with examples.. i suggest you to please make a video with examples

    A big fun of you Moazzma
    From Pakistan

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