CEO Of Your Career — 3 Things I Learned from Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker

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This is a short book about how to become your own CEO for your career

Use Feedback Analysis to Discover Your Strengths

You can only discover your strengths through feedback analysis. When you do something, write down what you expect will happen and then revisit it in 9–12 months to compare the results with your expectations.

This lets you know what your strengths actually are, and then focus on improving them.

Beware of areas where you have intellectual arrogance. Having expertise in one area makes people have contempt for other knowledge areas, or believe being bright is a substitute for knowledge. The typical example is engineers who take pride in not knowing anything about people. Or on the other hand, HR people who may take pride in not knowing subjects like basic accounting. Taking pride in ignorance is self-defeating. Get the skills and knowledge you need to fully realize your strengths.

This does not mean that you start to takeon work in your areas of weakness. You get where you need to support your strengths. It takes more work to go from incompetent to mediocre than it does to go from above average to excellent. Most people focus on their weaknesses instead of further developing their strengths.

Determine If You Are A Decision Maker Or An Advisor?

Some people are great in an advisory role but can’t handle the burden and pressure of making decisions. Others need good advisors to help them think, and then they can make a decision and act on it.

This is why when the #2 person gets promoted to the top spot, they often fail. the top spot needs a decision maker. Usually a top person will have a solid advisor as their #2.

Prepare For The Second Half Of Your Life

Many people know that they job they’re in is not what they want to do long term. To be able to shift to something else later in life means laying the groundwork early, even if it is on a small part time basis.

Create a parallel job for yourself. It can be volunteering with a nonprofit, some kind of social entrepreneurship initiative, or freelancing. Whatever it is, start early. If you don’t volunteer for a nonprofit before the age of 40, it is highly unlikely that you would do it after the age of 60.

This is important not only to set yourself up to do something more meaningful, but also to give yourself options in times of uncertainty.

Originally published at Usman Consulting Group.