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Managing Oneself - Drucker

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Submitted By dannybaro91
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HW ASSIGMENT #2

The topic is selected for my weekly assignment is ‘Managing Oneself’. It’s also the title of an article Peter Drucker wrote on Harvard Business Review in 1999. I found it very useful either for the topics we discussed in class during these past two weeks and for my career, both as a student and as a business person.
In the article, Drucker focuses the attention on 5 specific, but at the same time broad, questions: ‘What are my strengths?’, ‘How do I work?’, ‘What are my values?’, ‘Where do I belong?’, ‘What can I contribute?’. Reading Drucker’s words, I was most impressed by the second one: ‘How do I work?’, or ‘How do I perform?’.
I believe self-consciousness is a fundamental starting point in a successful managerial career: you have to be one hundred percent aware under what circumstances you work best and where your weaknesses may come to surface. One individual has to know his limits as well as his strengths.
Every person is different from each other and know yourself as much as possible will only turn out to be helpful and beneficial when working in group. Companies are now becoming more and more team-oriented than they were in the past and interactions with others occur on a daily basis. Only if you know yourself you will be able to know others.
I believe this is true even as a business student: work-groups happen regularly and you are expected to perform well even if you are not inside a decision room on the top floor of a company building. It has become fundamental to know to put yourself in the right spot doing the right thing as soon as the group is formed: it will be beneficial for the group’s success as well as yours.
In the article, Drucker (1999) writes, “Do not try to change yourself–you are unlikely to succeed. Work hard to improve the way you perform”; I completely agree with that.
Knowing who you are and how you perform is

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