Managing Oneself By: Peter Drucker Tami Cusick Loma Linda University EMMC 453 The article “Managing Oneself” is mainly about that in order to be successful you have to know and understand yourself. I agreed with Drucker that if you have ambition and smarts and work your way up in your profession that it doesn’t matter where you started. There are many upper level managers that started as a field employee within AMR. It is clear that they were ambitious and chose to continue on in this profession and just look at where it has taken them.
Some important themes are mentioned in this article. First is knowing your strengths. With this it is important to know that we have choices and knowing our strengths will help us know where we belong. I especially enjoyed the portion where the author talks about doing a feedback analysis. I would have never thought that this simple process may explain a number of things about myself that I would never have expected before. Then there is the concentration on the strengths that is really important.
You need to focus on your strengths which can then produce results. Something else key is use your manners. Simple please’s and thank you’s can go a long way. Even when your day is crappy and you are mad at the world, your manners may save you from an unpleasant conversation from your boss because you were rude or inappropriate with a co-worker. Another thing to remember is that in order to perform you have to know how you learn. Learning styles are an important factor in the learning process.
Understanding your learning style can make a enormous difference in the knowledge that you gain in the simplest tasks. Most importantly, as the author points out, is don’t change yourself, work hard at improving yourself and try not to work on things you cannot perform at your best. In order to be effective within an organization, you must be compatible with the values of the business. For example, at AMR our mission is patient focused, care giver inspired and customer centered.
This is certainly true for me. I am always focused on the patients and there needs at the time of our encounter. I like to inspire other care givers and our patients are our customers. If you focus on your patient then you are actively being customer centered. Something else to remember is that understanding the strengths of the people you work with will ultimately help you become more effective. When co-workers know and use each other’s strengths to work together and develop a better outcome.
