Page 193 - The Drucker Lectures

174 [ The Drucker Lectures

ern management and that goes back thousands of years. When-
ever you do something of significance, whenever you are making
an important decision, and especially whenever you are making
a decision about people (that is your most important decision),
you write down what you expect the results will be. Then, nine
months later or a year later, you look at it. And then you will see
very, very soon what you are good at. You will see very, very soon
what you need to learn, where you need to improve. And you can
also see very, very soon where you are simply not gifted.
There are no universal geniuses, but a person can be very
good. For instance, I have seen people who can just look at a
market and understand it. They do not need any tools or re-
search. But they are very often hopeless when it comes to man-
aging people. So find out what you are really good at and then
make sure you place yourself where your strengths can produce
results. Yes, one has to work at overcoming weaknesses. But even
if you work very hard and you manage to become reasonably
competent in an area in which you really are not gifted, you are
not going to be a top producer. You will be a top producer if you
put yourself where your strengths are and if you work on devel-
oping your strengths.
The second thing to pay a great deal of attention to is how
and where you place other people. Again, place people where
their strengths can produce results. When you look at an or-
ganization, everybody has access to the same money. Money is
totally impersonal; everybody has access to the same materials.
What differentiates a successful organization from most oth-
ers is the way they place their people. It is not only that they
keep on developing their people, but they first place them where
the strengths of the people can produce results and where their
weaknesses are irrelevant.
One cannot stress it enough in a country like yours—which
is trying to catch up and does not have too much time—that the