1. What Are My Strengths?
1.1. A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weaknesses, let alone on something one cannot do at all.
1.1.1. Put yourself where your strengths can produce results.
1.2. We need to know our strengths in order to know where we belong
1.3. The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis
1.3.1. Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen. Nine or 12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations.
1.3.1.1. Practiced consistently, this simple method will show you within a fairly short period of time, maybe two or three years, where your strengths lie�and this is the most important thing to know. The method will show you what you are doing or failing to do that deprives you of the full benefits of your strengths. It will show you where you are not particularly competent. And finally, it will show you where you have no strengths and cannot perform
1.3.2. Analysis will rapidly show where you need to improve skills or acquire new ones. It will also show the gaps in your knowledge�and those can usually be filled.
1.3.3. Discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it
1.3.4. Comparing your expectations with your results also indicates what not to do. We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre
1.3.4.1. One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.
1.3.4.1.1. And yet most people�especially most teachers and most organizations�concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and time should go instead to making a competent person into a star performer.
2. How Do I Perform?
2.1. Too many people work in ways that are not their ways, and that almost guarantees nonperformance
2.2. It is a matter of personality
2.2.1. It is formed long before a 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.
2.2.2. A person�s way of performing can be slightly modified, but it is unlikely to be completely changed
2.2.3. A few common personality traits usually determine how a person performs.
2.2.3.1. Am I a reader or a listener?
2.2.3.2. How do I learn?
2.2.3.2.1. You can learn by listening or by reading or by writing (Beethoven: If I don�t write it downimmediately, 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)
2.2.3.2.2. But there are probably half adozen different ways to learn (Some people learn by doing. Others learn by hearing themselves talk). Of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, understanding how you learn is the easiest to acquire.
2.2.3.2.3. And yet, acting on this knowledge is the key to performance; or rather, not acting on this knowledge condemns one to Nonperformance
2.2.3.3. Do I work well with people, or am I a loner? In what relationship?
2.2.3.3.1. Some people work best as subordinates.
2.2.3.3.2. Some people work best as team members.
2.2.3.3.3. Others work best alone.
2.2.3.3.4. Some are exceptionally talented as coaches and mentors;
2.2.3.3.5. Others are simply incompetent as mentors.
2.2.3.4. Do I produce results as a decision maker or as an adviser?
2.2.3.4.1. A great many people perform best as advisers but cannot take the burden and pressure of making the decision
2.2.3.4.2. A good many other people need an adviser to force themselves to think; then they can make decisions and act on them with speed, self-confidence, and courage.
2.2.3.4.3. This is a reason, by the way, that the number two person in an organization often fails when promoted to the number one position. The top spot requires a decision maker.
2.2.3.4.4. Strong decision makers often put somebody they trust into the number two spot as their adviser- and in that position the person is outstanding. But in the number one spot, the same person fails.
2.2.3.5. Do I perform well under stress, or do I need a highly structured and predictable environment? Do I work best in a big organization or a small one?
2.2.3.5.1. Few people work well in all kinds of environments.
2.2.3.5.2. Some people who were very successful in large organizations flounder miserably when they moved into smaller ones. And the reverse is equally true.
3. What Are My Values?
3.1. This is not a question of ethics
3.1.1. That is the mirror test. Ethics requires that you ask yourself, What kind of person do I want to see in the mirror in the morning?
3.1.2. Ethics is only part of a value system� especially of an organization�s value system
3.1.2.1. To work in an organization whose value system is unacceptable or incompatible with one�s own condemns a person both to frustration and to nonperformance.
3.2. Organizations, like people, have values. To be effective in an organization, a person�s values must be compatible with the organization�s values
3.2.1. They do not need to be the same, but they must be close enough to coexist.
3.2.2. A person�s strengths and the way that person performs rarely conflict; the two are complementary. But there is sometimes a conflict between a person�s values and his or her strengths. What one does well�even very well and successfully�may not fit with one�s value system.In that case, the work may not appear to be worth devoting one�s life to
4. Responsibility for Relationships
4.1. Very few people work by themselves and achieve results by themselves. Most people work with others and are effective with other people. That is true whether they are members of an organization or independently employed. Managing yourself requires taking responsibility for relationships
4.1.1. To be effective, therefore, you have to know the strengths, the performance modes, and the values of your coworkers
4.1.2. The first secret of effectiveness is to understand the people you work with and depend on so that you can make use of their strengths, their ways of working, and their values
4.1.3. Today the great majority of people work with others who have different tasks and responsibilities. The second part of relationship responsibility is taking responsibility for communication. Whenever I, or any other consultant, start to work with an organization, the first thing I hear about are all the personality conflicts. Most of these arise from the fact that people do not know what other people are doing and how they do their work, or what contribution the other people are concentrating on and what results they expect. And the reason they do not know is that they have not asked and therefore have not been told
5. What Should I Contribute?
5.1. Knowledge workers in particular have to learn to ask a question that has not been asked before: What should my contribution be? To answer it, they must address three distinct elements: What does the situation require? Given my strengths, my way of performing, and my values, how can I make the greatest contribution to what needs to be done? And finally, What results have to be achieved to make a difference?
5.2. it is rarely possible� or even particularly fruitful�to look too far ahead. A plan can usually cover no more than 18 months and still be reasonably clear and specific. So the question in most cases should be, Where and how can I achieve results that will make a difference within the next year and a half? The answer must balance several things...
5.2.1. To aim at results that cannot be achieved�or that can be only under the most unlikely circumstances� is not being ambitious; it is being foolish.
5.2.2. the results should be meaningful. They should make a difference
5.2.3. results should be visible and, if at all possible, measurable. From this will come a course of action: what to do, where and how to start, and what goals and deadlines to set.
6. The Second Half of Your Life
6.1. We hear a great deal of talk about the midlife crisis of the executive. It is mostly boredom. At 45, most executives have reached the peak of their business careers, and they know it. After 20 years of doing very much the same kind of work, they are very good at their jobs. But they are not learning or contributing or deriving challenge and satisfaction from the job. And yet they are still likely to face another 20 if not 25 years of work. That is why managing oneself increasingly leads one to begin a second career. We will see many more second careers undertaken by people who have achieved modest success in their first jobs Such people have substantial skills, and they know how to work. They need a community�the house is empty with the children gone�and they need income as well. But above all, they need challenge. People who manage the second half of their lives may always be a minority. The majority may �retire on the job� and count the years until their actual retirement. But it is this minority, the men and women who see a long working-life expectancy as an opportunity both for themselves and for society, who will become leaders and models
6.1.1. There are three ways to develop a second career
6.1.1.1. The first is actually to start one. Often this takes nothing more than moving from one kind of organization to another. But there are also growing numbers of people who move into different lines of work altogether
6.1.1.2. The second way to prepare for the second half of your life is to develop a parallel career Many people who are very successful in their first careers stay in the work they have been doing, either on a full-time or part-time or consulting basis. But in addition, they create a parallel job, usually in a nonprofit organization, that takes another ten hours of work a week.
6.1.1.3. Finally, there are the social entrepreneurs. These are usually people who have been very successful in their first careers. They love their work, but it no longer challenges them. In many cases they keep on doing what they have been doing all along but spend less and less of their time on it. They also start another activity, usually a nonprofit