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Knowledge Management and People

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» MANAGING YOURSELF BEST OF HBR 1999 We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: If you 've got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out. But with opportunity comes responsibility. Companies today aren 't managing their employees 'careers; knowledge workers must, effectively, be their own chief executive officers. It 's up to you to carve out your place, to know when to change course, and to keep yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span some 50 years.To do those things well, you 'll need to cultivate a deep understanding of yourself- notonly what your strengths and weaknesses are but also how you learn, how you work with others, what …show more content…

In fact, the steadfast focus on performance and results that this habit produces explains why the institutions these two men founded, the Calvinist church and the Jesuit order, came to dominate Europe within 30 years. Practiced consistently, this simple method will show you within a fairly short period of time, maybe two or three years, where your strengths lie and this is the most important thing to know. The method will show you what you are doing or failing to do that deprives you of the full benefits of your strengths. It will show you where you are not particularly competent. And finally, it will show you where you have no strengths and cannot perform. Several implications for action follow from feedback analysis. First and foremost, concentrate on your strengths. Put yourself where your strengths can produce results. Peter F. Drucker is the Marie Rankin Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management (Emeritus) at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. This article is an excerpt from his It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than to improve from first-rate performance to excelience. expertise in one area-are contemptuous of knowledge in other areas or believe that being bright is a substitute for knowledge. First-rate engineers, for instance, tend to take pride in not knowing anything about people. Human beings, they

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