Managing Strengths not Weaknesses.
Posted by travispower on May 6, 2009
I read through the book, “Inside Drucker’s Mind”, last night and am looking forward to finishing up the epilogue tonight. It was a very quick and easy read and I highly recommend it as an interlude into any of the management books Drucker has written over his years. I think he has 34 of them…but this book, highlights his main contributions to management and steers you towards some of his books if you’re interested in particular chapters. After reading this book I’m going to hit up his top 5 books, as ranked by Drucker himself.
One of the chapters was written around the inherent strengths of people. He argues that management often tries to improve on a persons weaknesses instead of improve on their strengths and forgiving their weaknesses. I have always approached my personality in this way because I’ve wanted to become a well rounded individual.
For instance, I am not outgoing by any means and I’ve put a lot of effort into becoming more this way. I have succeeded in becoming proficient and confident in 1v1 situations with people, but still fail miserably in group settings. This is a weakness I’ve been very cognizant of and have read books, and practiced speaking techniques in order to increase my amiability around people.
What Drucker points out though, is the diminishing returns effect. In many cases in the world, there is a dimished return compared to the effort put in to accomplish the return. For instance, in weightlifting, when first starting out the trainee will accelerate very quickly through the weights lifted because the natural adaptation of the body to the exercise at first if very high. These are called beginner gains. At some point these gains will plateau and the trainee will have to increase their work ethic 2-3 times more just to see minimal gains in strength. In weightlifting, this is because the body has to start producing muscle in order to lift more, while at the beginning of the program the body was able to lift weight more based around learning the technique and learning how to use the muscles in a cooperative manner.
The point being, once a certain level is achieved, there is a dimished return effect to follow. Peter Drucker applies this to people and their strengths. The main difference between working on a weakness and working on a strength is that a weakness is something we are not good at, while a strength we are. Naturally some things come to us more easily than others. You might be talented at art, while I am athletic and coordinated. I’m good with numbers but you may not be. etc etc.
Since working on a strength coordinates with our inherent personalities, talents and abilities, we will be able to see large returns from the time we put in. Huge leaps and bounds can be made. However, if we’re focusing on our weaknesses, then the opposite is true. We will have to put in a huge amount of time and effort just to see a normal improvement in the skill because it is not natural to us. It does not come easy, it is not within our nature to do it.
Peter Drucker suggests managing for strengths. If someone is bad at a certain skill, find someone who is good at that skill and move the work to them. Divide up projects into tasks which can utilize different team members at different times for maximizing the skillset of the team.
When it comes time for a review it is important to note the employees strengths and focus on these rather than noting their weaknesses and asking them to improve on those. The employee could spend the next year trying to improve one weakness when he could have been focusing on a strength and made a breakthrough improvement there.
Lastly, we should focus our careers into areas that utilize more of our strengths instead of trying to bring up our weaknesses so that we will fit into a position better. Peter Drucker often told people that he had no business experience at all and never managed anybody and yet he is more often than not described as the father of modern management techniques. He’s written 39 books on the topic and many of the latest management books on the market find their ideas rooted back to Druckers work. The truth is though that Drucker knew he had a strength in writing and he went with it. His analytical nature, his ability to think critically about concepts and ideas and his ability to think creatively were his enablers. Many people refer to him as a management guru, when he first and foremost was a writer. Management juts happened to be what he wrote about.
I’m looking forward to going through the “Strengths Finder 2.0″ book and test released last year. My wife has the book, but apparently there is a sort of monopoly on the code required to access the online test which you can only take once. What a stupid idea if you ask me. Are we out to kill trees here by requiring people to purchase the book just to take the test? Got something against people that are thrifty and check the book out from the library?
