Managing YourSelf - Part III

One of the most important parts of business management is managing yourself. It’s not about managing the business but, it’s about organizing your life so you can accomplish the things that are important.

There are five key critical lessons that I have been posting here one lesson for each day. Click here, if you missed Part I on Thursday and here for Part II yesterday. 

#3. “Effective executives build on strengths—their own strengths, the strengths of their superiors, colleagues, and subordinates; and on the strengths in the situation, that is, on what they can do. They do not build on weakness. They do not start out with the things they cannot do.”

Judge people by what they are good at. If you want people who are competent at everything you’ll end up with a team of mediocrities.

The task is not to breed generalists. It is to enable the specialist to make himself and his specialty effective. This means that he must think through who is to use his output and what the user needs to know and to understand to be able to make productive the fragment the specialist produces… We can so structure as to make the strength relevant. A good tax accountant in private practice might be greatly hampered by his inability to get along with people. But in an organization such a man can be set up in an office of his own and shielded from direct contact with other people. In an organization one can make his strength effective and his weakness irrelevant.

Want to get ahead? You must do this for your boss as well. Stop bitching about what they are bad at and do the work necessary to allow them to focus on what they are good at.

Conversely, there is nothing quite as conducive to success, as a successful and rapidly promoted superior… The effective executive, therefore, asks: “What can my boss do really well?” “What has he done really well?” “What does he need to know to use his strength?” “What does he need to get from me to perform?” He does not worry too much over what the boss cannot do… Subordinates typically want to “reform” the boss. The able senior civil servant is inclined to see himself as the tutor to the newly appointed political head of his agency. He tries to get his boss to overcome his limitations. The effective ones ask instead: “What can the new boss do?” And if the answer is: “He is good at relationships with Congress, the White House, and the public,” then the civil servant works at making it possible for his minister to use these abilities.

Same goes for yourself. Do not turn yourself into a mediocre generalist. Delegate what you are not good at and spend your time on what you are good at.

Come back tomorrow for lesson #4.  _/|\_