Peter Drucker, self-knowledge, and career switching

The late Peter Drucker (d. 2005) is a resource who will get mentioned more than once in this blog. He's not just for MBA or management-science students; he's for anyone trying to stack Wednesday on top of Tuesday, or trying to develop one's career, whether by adding graduate credentials or other means. Lots of profound yet practical wisdom.

Two of many links:
http://www.epiphanyresources.com/9to5/articles/DruckerByPearson.pdf

No great surprise that a Drucker link is "epiphany resources." An important point that Drucker makes over and over again is that a manager must know her/his strengths -- and he claimed that most people don't know their own strengths.

I think this is a profound truth with practical implications. I've seen this demonstrated over and over again - people who are hung up about being something they have little or no aptitude for, while ignoring a talent that they could really do something with.

I wonder if this isn't even a worse problem with vicarious parental expectations. If we have trouble knowing what we ourselves are good at, it could be even worse with parental agendas.

More on this is at http://www.leadertoleader.org/knowledgecenter/journal.aspx?ArticleID=26


Abundance of Choices

. . .

Knowledge gives choice. It also explains why we suddenly have women in the same jobs as men. Historically, men and women have always had equal participation in the labor force -- the idea of the idle housewife is a 19th-century delusion. Men and women simply did different jobs. There's no civilization in which the two genders did the same work. However, knowledge work knows no gender; men and women do the same jobs. This, too, is a major change in the human condition.

To succeed in this new world, we will have to learn, first, who we are. Few people, even highly successful people, can answer the questions, Do you know what you're good at? Do you know what you need to learn so that you get the full benefit of your strengths? Few have even asked themselves these questions.

. . .