HBR's 10 Must Read "Managing Oneself" Note

life

What Are My Strengths?

Feedback analysis

The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis. Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen. 9 or 12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations.

Follow-up actions

Find out what are your strength and weakness, using feedback analysis. So that you can

  • Concentrate on your strengths. Put yourself where your strengths can produce results
  • Work on improving your strengths.
    • Improve skills, acquire new ones, fill in the knowledge gaps
  • Discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it.
    • Ex. engineers tend to take pride in not knowing anything about people
  • Remedy your bad habits that inhibit your effectiveness and performance
    • Ex. a planner may find that his beautiful plans fail because he doesn’t follow through on them

Other outcomes

  • Feedback analysis will also reveal when the problem is a lack of manners.

    • Manners are the lubricating oil of an organization.Manners - simple things like saying “please” and “thank you” and knowing a person’s name or asking after her family - enable two people to work together whether they like each other or not.
    • Bright people, especially bright young people, often do not understand this.
    • If analysis shows that someone’s brilliant work fails again and again as soon as cooperation from others is required, it probably indicates a lack of courtesy - that is, a lack of manners.

  • Feedback analysis also indicates what not to do

    • It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.

      • JW: this is totally against my intuitive understanding. Since elementary school, teachers kept telling me that improving from 60% to 90% is far more easier than improving from 90% to 100%. I really need to think about this.

How Do I Perform?

For knowledge workers, this is even a more important question than “what are my strengths”.

Am I a reader or a listener?

  • A reader is someone who learns easily from reading things, like a book, an article or their own notes.
  • A listener is someone who learns easily from taking a lecture or hearing others talking about it.
  • Although one reader type of person can also learn fairly quickly sitting in a lecture, but taking notes or reading the same thing from books or articles will help them do better.
  • People are rarely both.

JW: when sitting in a class, do you learn better taking notes and reviewing it afterwards, or you will remember everything afterwards without any notes?

JW: and being a reading, it means you should gather information in writing beforehand, because reading takes time.

How do I learn?

  • Learn by listening and reading or writing or doing or hearing themselves talk or …
    • Ex. Beethoven learn by taking copious notes, but never actually looked at them again. “If I don’t write it down immediately, I forget it right away. If I put it into a sketchbook, I never forget it and I never have to look it up again.”

JW: People can be a mixing of these different ways of learning. Even learning in different territories, people prefer different methods. Take myself as an example, I definitely learn better by taking notes but don’t need to revisit it again later, if it’s something theoretical; when it comes to engineering such as chip design and programming, I learn better by doing with no doubts; when it comes to something unclear, I learn better by discussing it with capable peers.

Do I work well with people or am I a loner?

In modern society, nobody can work as a completely loner, despite some very brilliant scientists and artists. So in what relationship is the next question.

  • Some people work best as subordinates
  • Some work best as team members, or work best alone.
    • Likes to work alone doesn’t mean you need to be a loner
  • Some are talented as mentors, others are simply incompetent as mentors.

JW: I used to think that I like work alone, but actually I perform best working in a dynamic, flat organized team. Competent, proactive team members give me more energy and pressure to move forward.

JW: I probably is not one of the best mentors. I believe in giving the right direction, learning by yourself, then periodically checks and Q&A, final exam with a public speech for sharing and demonstration. That’s how I learn the best.

Do I produce results as a decision maker or as an adviser?

  • Some people perform best gathering information, but cannot take the burden and pressure of making the decision.
  • A good many other people, by contrast, need an adviser to force themselves to think; then they can make decisions and act on them with speed, self-confidence and courage.

JW: I’m obviously an adviser, not a very good decision maker. I really enjoy gathering information from different aspects. This makes the decision making period really long. And after the decision is made, I can act quickly. But the problem is, only if I fully agree with the decision! If I’m not 100% persuaded, I don’t perform well at all. I used to think that everybody is like this, but actually found out lots of people can act fairly well on something they don’t 100% agreed with.

Do I perform well under stress, or do I need a highly structured and predictable environment?

JW: someone will never know until they worked under some real pressure and stress, when the goal you have to be really “stretched” to reach.

JW: no doubts, I like highly structured and predictable environment. When work under stress, I still can deliver but really don’t like it, also will make lots of mistakes.

Do I work best in a big organization or a small one?

To my understanding

  • Big organization is structured. People is not that dynamic because of this structure. And everyone else expect you to behave like that.
  • Working in a small one gives you lots of flexibility and space to shuffle around resource and cut corners.

JW: I like the flexibility of small org, but don’t like the unpredictable environment. Is it possible to combine flexibility and predictability?

What Are My Values

Ethics

  • Mirror test of ethics: what kind of person do I want to see in the mirror in the morning?
  • But ethics is only part of a value system, especially of an organization’s value system.

Other than ethics

  • Ex. views of relationship between organizations and people.
  • Ex. views of responsibility of an organization to its people and their development.
  • Ex. Views of a person’s most important contribution to an enterprise.

Compatible values

  • Organization’s value and individual’s value must be compatible
    • Don’t need to be the same, but close enough to coexist
  • A person’s strengths and the way that person performs rarely conflict, but there is sometimes a conflict between a person’s values and her strengths

Values are and should be the ultimate test.

JW: one of my basic value is integrity and dignity. I want to work in an environment that I can keep my integrity (no lying, no faking), as well as dignity (respected, recognized, no ass kissing)

Where Do I Belong?

After answering previous 3 questions: what are my strengths? how do I perform? and what are my values?, then you should decide where do you belong.

Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths/method of work/values.

Find an organization and job suite your situations can transform an ordinary person into an outstanding performer.

JW: still trying to figure it out myself.

What Should I Contribute?

Knowledge workers nowadays are not told what to do any longer. They need to ask a question that has not been asked before: what should my contribution be?, after addressing the following 3 distinct elements

  • What does the situation require?
  • Given my strengths, way of performing, and values, how can I make the greatest contribution to what needs to be done?
  • What results have to be achieved to make a difference?

Make a stretching plan that fits both social and personal reality

  • A plan can usually cover no more than 18 months and still be reasonably clear and specific.
  • Define the results
    • Hard to achieve (stretching) but within reach.
    • Meaningful to make a difference.
    • Visible and measurable (if possible).
  • Actions
    • What to do
    • Where and how to start
    • What goals and deadlines to set

JW: need more time to figure it out.

Responsibility for Relationships

Few people pay attention to this: know your coworkers, their strength, way of perform and values. You have to understand that your coworkers, including your bosses, are individuals and are entitled to do their work in the way they do it best.

  • Observe, and find out how they work
    • Especially “the boss”. Adapt to what makes your bosses most effective.
  • Take responsibility for communication
    • Ask questions to get to know your coworkers, and don’t be afraid of being presumptuous or inquisitive or stupid.
    • Organizations are built on trust
      • The existence of trust between people does not necessarily mean that they like one another. It means that they understand one another.

JW: extremely helpful to myself, especially the “take responsibility for communication” part. In then engineers’ world, we hardly get to know each other enough. That’s why team building is important, but sometimes they are inefficient. Know how to ask the right questions to get better idea about how your coworkers work most efficient and how you can help them to achieve that is super important.

The Second Half of Your Life

At 45, most executive have reached the peak of their business careers and they know it. 20 years of doing the same kind of work, they are very good at it, but no longer learning or contributing or deriving challenge and satisfaction from the job. And still 20 to 25 years of work to continue. It’s time to develop a second career.

The majority may “retire on the job” and count the years until their actual retirement. Minority who see a long working-life expectancy as an opportunity, and they will become leaders and models.

  • Move from one kind of organization to another, such as from stablished company to startup.
  • Develop a parallel career, such as working in a nonprofit organization with 10 hours of work per week.
  • Social entrepreneurs. Start nonprofit organizations of your own and devote to them completely.

JW: one needs to plan this in their 30’s.