Managing Ourselves

 He lived a remarkable life, a good man beloved by many, who, by holding fast to his own purpose, died leaving a Great Legacy.   Peter Drucker has been extolled by many, including BusinessWeek as The Man Who Invented Management  which for him was  getting the best out of people

Peter Drucker is a long time hero of mine, an inspiration to the work I am doing.    His great question, what do you want to contribute, is one we can all ponder.  He always understood what counts in life.  It’s not what you get, it’s not what you achieve, it’s what you contribute.    

You could say that you spend the first half of your life “getting” – getting an education, getting married, getting a job, getting a house, getting kids.   The second half of life is when we start giving – giving our adult children to the world, giving breaks to younger workers so they can get a leg up, giving more seriously to charitable endeavors that move us, giving in more gracefully to life’s daily annoyances and, if we are lucky, giving ourselves over to our passion and purpose so we can become more fully ourselves.  

Drucker was a Renaissance man, writer, journalist, professor, historian and teacher of religion, philosophy, political science and Asian art.   He never wasted time on panels or committees and declined requests to contribute articles or sit on boards so he could stick to his work and what he believed was his contribution to the world.

What I admired most about him was his clarity of observation and writing.  He was truly a student of life.  In 1999, he spoke about Managing Oneself in words I’ve never forgotten.
 

IN a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long term perspective, I think it is very probable that the most important event these historians will see is not technology, it is not the Internet, it is not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time -- and I mean that literally -- for the first time, substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And let me say, we are totally unprepared for it.
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We will have to learn where we belong, what our strengths are, what we have to learn so that we get the full benefit from it, where our defects are, what we are not good at, where we belong, what our values are. For the first time in human history, we will have to learn to take responsibility for managing ourselves. And as I said, this is probably a much bigger change than any technology -- a change in the human condition. Nobody teaches it -- no school, no college -- and [it] probably will be another hundred years before they teach it.

In the meantime, the achievers, and I don't mean millionaires, but rather the ones who want to make a contribution, who want to lead a fulfilling life, and want to feel that there is some purpose in their being on this earth. They will have to learn something which, only a few years ago, a very few super achievers ever knew. They will have to learn to manage themselves, to build on their strengths, to build on their values.

No wonder we feel so often overwhelmed.  THE VERY CONDITION OF BEING HUMAN IS CHANGING.   We are doing what no other generation in history has done before,  making choices in every part of our lives in a world of accelerating change.  WE have to know when to say NO and WHAT to reach for.  No one can do it for us.

Drucker's right.  That’s what we have to do, all of us.  Manage ourselves and build on our strengths and values so we too can contribute to a better world.