Managing oneself.

Throughout history, people had little need to manage their careers--they were born into their station in life or, in the recent past, they relied on their companies to chart their career paths. But times have drastically changed. Today, we must all learn to manage ourselves. What does that mean? According to Peter Drucker, it means we have to learn to develop ourselves. We have to place ourselves where we can make the greatest contribution to our organizations and communities. And we have to stay mentally alert and engaged during a 50-year working life, which means knowing how and when to change the work that we do. It may seem obvious that people achieve results by doing what they are good at and by working in ways that fit their abilities. But, Drucker says, very few people actually know--let alone take advantage of--their unique strengths. He challenges each of us to ask ourselves fundamental questions: What are my strengths? How do I perform? What are my values? Where do I belong? What should my contribution be? Don't try to change yourself, cautions Drucker. Instead, concentrate on improving the skills you have and accepting assignments that are tailored to your individual way of working. If you do that, you can transform yourself from an ordinary worker into an outstanding performer. Successful careers today are not planned out in advance. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they have asked themselves those questions, and they have rigorously assessed their unique characteristics. This article challenges readers to take responsibility for managing their futures, both in and out of the office.

The discipline of innovation.

Some innovations spring from a flash of genius. But as Peter Drucker points out in this HBR Classic, most result from a conscious, purposeful search for opportunities. For managers seeking innovation, engaging in disciplined work is more important than having an entrepreneurial personality. Writing originally in the May-June 1985 issue, Drucker describes the major sources of opportunities for innovation. Within a company or industry, opportunities can be found in unexpected occurrences, incongruities of various kinds, process needs, or changes in an industry or market. Outside a company, opportunities arise from demographic changes, changes in perception, or new knowledge. These seven sources overlap, and the potential for innovation may well lie in more than one area at a time. Innovations based on new knowledge, of course, tend to have the greatest effect on the marketplace. But it often takes decades before the ideas are translated into actual products, processes, or services. The other sources of innovation are easier and simpler to handle, yet they still require managers to look beyond established practices. Drucker emphasizes that in seeking opportunities, innovators need to look for simple, focused solutions to real problems. The greatest praise an innovation can receive is for people to say, "This is obvious!" Grandiose ideas designed to revolutionize an industry rarely work. Innovation, like any other endeavor, takes talent, ingenuity, and knowledge. But Drucker cautions that if diligence, persistence, and commitment are lacking, companies are unlikely to succeed at the business of innovation.

Looking ahead: implications of the present.

On its seventy-fifth anniversary, HBR asked five of the business world's most insightful thinkers to comment on the challenges taking shape for executives as they move into the next century. In "The Future That Has Already Happened," Peter Drucker examines the effects of the increasing underpopulation of the world's developed countries. With growing imbalances in labor resources worldwide, he writes, executives in the developed countries will need to improve the productivity of knowledge and of knowledge workers to maintain a competitive advantage. Esther Dyson's article "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" reveals the mind shift executives will need to make in a networked world, where companies will be known for what they do rather than for what they say. Executives will have to respond openly and intelligently to feedback about their organizations. The old language of property and ownership no longer serves executives, writes Charles Handy in "The Citizen Corporation." The corporation should be thought of no longer as property but as a community, where members are regarded as citizens. Technology has given executives more information than today's machines can help them understand, explains Paul Saffo in "Are You Machine Wise?" Machine-wise executives will know when to turn their computers off and take their own counsel, he writes. Peter Senge's article "Communities of Leaders and Learners" urges executives to reject the myth of leaders as isolated heroes and instead to build a community of leaders. Sustained institutional learning, he writes, requires organizations to reintegrate their typically fragmented learning processes.

The post-capitalist executive. Interview by T George Harris.

For half a century, Peter F. Drucker has influenced senior executives across the globe with his rare insight into socioeconomic forces and practical advice for navigating often turbulent managerial waters. In his latest contribution to HBR, Drucker discusses the impact of the ideas in his latest work, Post-Capitalist Society, on the day-to-day lives and careers of managers. Drucker argues that managers must learn to negotiate a new environment with a different set of work rules and career expectations. Companies currently face downsizing and turmoil with increasing regularity. Once built to last like pyramids, corporations are now more like tents. In addition, businesses in the post-capitalist society grow through many and varied complicated alliances often baffling to the traditional manager. Confronted by these changes, managers must relearn how to manage. In the new world of business, information is replacing authority as the primary tool of the executive. And, Drucker advises, one embarks on the road toward information literacy not by buying the latest technological gadget but by identifying gaps in knowledge. As companies increasingly become temporary institutions, the manager also must begin to take individual responsibility for himself or herself. To that end, the executive must explore what Drucker calls competencies: a person's abilities, likes, dislikes, and goals, both professional and personal. If executives rise to these challenges, a new organizational foundation will be built. While a combination of rank and power supported the traditional organization, the internal structure of the emerging organization will be mutual understanding and trust.

The new society of organizations.

Managers in every organization from the largest publicly owned company to the smallest not-for-profit face the same unsettling imperative: to build change into their organization's very structure. On the one hand, this means being prepared to abandon everything that the organization does. On the other, it means constantly creating the new. Unless this process of abandonment and creation goes on without ceasing, the organization will very soon find itself obsolescent--losing performance and with it the ability to attract and hold the people on whom its performance depends. What drives this imperative is the nature of the organization itself. Every organization exists to put knowledge to work, but knowledge changes fast, with today's certainties becoming tomorrow's absurdities. That is why any knowledgeable individual must likewise acquire new knowledge every several years or also become obsolete. Familiar as the term "organization" is, we have only begun to reckon with the implications of living in a world in which the fundamental unit of society is--and must be--destabilizing. That is why questions of social responsibility now arise so often and from so many quarters. We need new ways to understand the relationship between organizations and their employees, who may in fact be unpaid volunteers, independent professionals whose organization is a network, or knowledgeable specialists who can--and often do--move on at any moment. For more than 600 years, no society has had as many competing centers of power as the one in which we now live. Drucker explains why change is--and must be--the only constant in an organization's life and explores the consequences for managers, individuals, and society overall.

The new productivity challenge.

"The single greatest challenge facing managers in the developed countries of the world is to raise the productivity of knowledge and service workers," writes Peter F. Drucker in "The New Productivity Challenge." Productivity, says Drucker, ultimately defeated Karl Marx; it gave common laborers the chance to earn the wages of skilled workers. Now five distinct steps will raise the productivity of knowledge and service workers--and not only stimulate new economic growth but also defuse rising social tensions.

The discipline of innovation.

As managers recognize the heightened importance of innovation to competitive success, they face an apparent paradox: the orderly and predictable decisions on which a business rests depend increasingly on the disorderly and unpredictable process of innovation. How can managers expect to plan for--or count on--a process that is itself so utterly dependent on creativity, inspiration, and old-fashioned luck? Drawing on his many years' experience studying innovative and entrepreneurial companies, the author argues that this paradox is apparent only, not real. Most of what happens in successful innovations is not the happy occurrence of a blinding flash of insight but, rather, the careful implementation of an unspectacular but systematic management discipline. At the heart of that discipline lies the knowledge of where to look for innovation opportunities and how to identify them. It is to this study of the sources of innovation that Mr. Drucker here addresses himself.

Science and industry, challenges of antagonistic interdependence.

No one is responsible for the disenchantment of American science with its customers, government and industry, and of the customers with science. But the estrangement that has replaced the earlier relationship of mutual respect, while dangerous to both sides, is a mortal threat to American science.