Synopsis
The best business writer on how to manage yourself successfully. I need to read this every year. Easy to understand advise on how to be better.
Key Takeaways
Page 163 – Most people will have to manage themselves. They have to place themselves where they can make the greatest contribution, where they can develop themselves. They will have to learn how and when to change what they do, how they do it and when they do it.
You are responsible.
Pahe 164 – People know what they are not good at. One cannot build performance on weaknesses, let alone on something one cannot do it all.
Focus on your strengths
Page 165 – The Feedback analysis, whenever one makes a key decision and whenever one does a key action, one writes down what one expects will happen. And nine to twelve months later one then feeds back from results to expectations.
How do you know its working
Page 165 – Several actions 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 skill or acquire knowledge. Third, it identifies the areas where intellectual arrogance causes disabling ignorance.
Work and capitalize on your strengths and know where you are weak so you can avoid those road blocks
Page 167 – Feedback analysis can overcome intellectual arrogance and work on acquiring the skills and knowledge needed to make ones strengths fully productive
Be good enough so your weaknesses don’t destroy your strengths.
Page 167 – Feedback analysis can remedy ones bad habits…..ideas don’t move mountains, bulldozers do. But the idea tells the bulldozer where they have to go to work
Know what matters, the outcome, the mission as Jocko says.
Page 167 – Manners are the “lubricating oil” of an organization
The way you go about things is important. Think how hard Gio makes things for himself.
Page 167 – If the analysis shows that brilliant work fails again and again as soon as it requires cooperation by others, it probably indicates a lack of courtesy, that is, of manners
Understand where your behavior fails. Simple thing, do not interrupt.
Page 168 – 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 – and especially a knowledge worker – should not take on work.
Do not work on your weaknesses
Page 168 – The final action conclusion is to waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence.
Just make sure its not disabling you.
Page 169 – Like one’s strengths, how one performs is individual. It is personality. Whether personality be 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 have results by doing what they are good at, people have results by performing how they perform
You are what you are, use it to your advantage.
Page 172 – Beethoven learned by writing in sketchbooks, Eisenhower learned by reading, Lyndon Johnson was a listener, discussing in meetings, Truman via lectures, Alfred Sloan small and lively meetings and then composing letters, another CEO learnt by talking things out with associates.
Everyone learns in different ways. How do you learn?
Page 173 – “To ask “how do I perform” and “how do I learn” are the most important first questions 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 asks: “In what relationships do I work with people?” Some people work as suborordinates”
The environment impels
Page 174 – “Do you prefer stress or do you need a highly structured predicitable environment, Do you perform better in large or small organizations?, Do you produce results as a decision maker or as an advisor”
Set yourself up for success
Page 175 – “The action conclusion: Again, do not try to change yourself – it is unlikely to be successful. But work hard to improve the way you perform. And try not to do work of any kind in a way you do not perform or perform poorly”
Stay in your circle of competence.
Page 176 – “This is the mirror test. What ethics requires is to ask oneself: “What kind of person do I want to see when I look in the mirror. Ethics are a clear value system. And they do not vary much, one is ethical in one place will be ethical in another”
You know what is right and what is wrong.
Page 177 – “The way a company does things can also be a value conflict”
Recruit internally or externally? Build quality or build cheap?
Page 179 – “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”
Be honest and clear with everyone in your team.
Page 180 – “Successful career are not planned. They are the career 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
Page 180 – “What is my contribution? 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?”
What is the greatest good you can do.
Page 182 – “Where and how can I have results that make difference”
What is the greatest good you can do.
Page 184 – “Take relationship responsibility”
Build relationships with those people you need to work with so you can achieve the greater goal.
Page 185 – “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 message, that is, in a memo if they are readers, or by talking to them if they are listeners, and so on.
I need to do this with my key stakeholders each year.
Page 187 – “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 results I should be expected to deliver,” the response is always, “This is most helpful. But why haven’t you told me earlier?”
Set the expectations early.
Key Takeaways
Are you a reader or listener?
Do feedback analysis on big initiatives?
How do you learn?
What are you good at?
What are you bad at?
What are your weaknesses?
How do you work?
What are your values?
What is your contribution?
What results do you expect to deliver?
What key relationships are you responsible for?
9/10
Stranger in Sydney 