Today is a time of immense and unprecedented opportunity. Gone are the days where you are stuck having to do the same job that your father did. You can rise to the top of your profession with drive, talent and ambition and it doesn’t matter where you’ve come from. However, to achieve this you must look after your own career and not rely on a company to do so for you. You must also personally make sure you’re engaged and productive.

In this book, Peter Drucker explains how to carve out your place in the world and when to change course. He does so by asking a series of questions.

What are my strengths?

You need to know what you’re good at as a person can only perform from strengths. Performance cannot be built on weaknesses.

The way to identify your strengths is through feedback analysis. Write down your expected outcomes for your key decisions and actions then 9-12 months later, compare them with the results.

Based on this feedback you can put together a plan of action:

• Place yourself where your strengths can produce results.
• Work to improve your strengths.
• Avoid intellectual arrogance and acquire skills as required.
• Remedy any bad habits. A weakness may in fact just be a bad habit. For example, a weakness of not being productive could be due to browsing the internet too much. Eliminating that bad habit could remove the weakness.
• Know what not to do by identifying areas of incompetence and then avoiding them.

How do I perform?

Drucker defines most people as being either a “reader” or a “listener”. President John F. Kennedy was a reader who surrounded himself with a brilliant group of writers who assisted him by writing to him before discussing memos with him in person.

Another American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt was a listener, preferring free-for-all press conferences with no advanced warning of the questions so he could discuss the matter out loud rather than reading and writing.

You may learn through reading, writing, doing, listening or talking. The important thing is to always employ the methods that work. Rather than trying to radically change yourself, work harder to improve the way you perform instead.

What are my values?

When it comes to ethics, Drucker advocates what he calls the “mirror test”. Ask yourself “what kind of person do I want to see in the mirror in the morning?”.

Your personal value system should also be compatible with that of the company that you work for. Avoid conflicts where your values differ. For example, is the company’s emphasis on short term results or long term goals and do they match yours? This is the ultimate test to see if you’re compatible with your employer.

Where do I belong?

Only a small minority know at a young age where they belong. Mathematicians, musicians and cooks are usually mathematicians, musicians and cooks by the time they’re four or five years old. Most people do not know where they belong until they’re well past their mid-20s. By then though, if they want to be highly successful, they should know where they belong or rather where they do not belong as successful careers are not planned.

Successful careers develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their way of working and their values.

Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person that’s competent and hardworking but otherwise mediocre, into an outstanding performer.

What should I contribute?

The quest on contribution for a knowledge worker involves several elements:

• What does the situation require?
• Given my strengths, methods and values, what is the greatest contribution that I could make to what needs to be done?
• What results have to be achieved to make a difference?

It is rarely possible to look too far ahead in this situation. An 18 month plan should:

• Achieve meaningful results and make a difference
• Set stretched and difficult, but reachable goals
• Gain a visible and measurable outcome.

Therefore you should define a course of action by planning what to do, where and how to start and deciding what goals, objectives and deadlines to set.

Responsibility for relationships

To manage oneself requires taking relationship responsibility as most people work with other people and are effective through other people. Working relationships are as much based on people as on work. It is important to take responsibility of communicating how you perform to reduce personality conflicts. Trust between people is what companies are built on. This doesn’t mean that colleagues necessarily like each other, but they understand one another.

Drucker concludes that in the modern working world, managing oneself requires unprecedented things from the individual. This in effect means that each knowledge worker should think and behave like a CEO.