Feedback analysis helps personal performance (based on Drucker)

Reading an excellent booklet (like the UK publishing Quick Reads) on Managing Oneself by the well known management guru Peter F Drucker (1909-2005)… (also appears in Classic Drucker by Harvard Business School Press)

Drucker asks us the questions…….

WHAT ARE MY STRENGTHS?

Drucker says….
• Most people think they know what they are good at – they are usually wrong.
• More often, people know what they are bad at, even then people are more wrong then right.
• A person can only perform from a strength.
• One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.
all very obvious you might say…..am I sure that, at 51+, I have been playing to my strengths?

FEEDBACK ANALYSIS

Drucker argues that the best, and he affirms, the only, way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis.

Whenever one makes a key decision, or takes a key action, one should write down what one thinks will happen.9-12 months later, and then make sure one compares actual results with one’s expectations.

If I am honest, it involves some trust to ask colleagues, and business associates, for a 360 degree feedback of my performance. The rewards are there for the taking, however.

Drucker in his article, Managing Oneself, does not indicate if this includes family and friends. As a man of faith, a husband and father, as well as a work colleague, entrepreneur, business consultant (North Yorkshire), member of a faith community, local resident, voter and citizen of the United Kingdom, and finally a loyal subject of HM Queen E. etc. where do the boundaries of feedback analysis truly lie, given that Drucker implies most people do not play to their strengths.

Tags: Personal performance