Here are Drucker’s ten (10) life principles and expect to discover your own success and more
importantly your own significance.
1. Find out who
you are. “Whenever people are on the road to success,” Drucker said, “they
tend to think of repositioning as something they do if they’re a failure. But I
would say that you ought to reposition when you’re a success, because that’s
when you can afford it.” But no one can reposition for significance, Drucker
claimed, without first knowing who they are and where they belong.
2. Reposition
yourself for full effectiveness and fulfillment. “Early in their careers,”
Drucker said, “people tend to have a fairly limited timeframe, of four years or
so. They can’t visualize what comes after that.” By the time they achieve some
measure of success, however, the timeframe expands. “Suddenly they begin to
think about options that are twenty, thirty, or more years ahead of them,”
Drucker said. Such a long view often brings clarity where none existed before.
3. Find your
existential core. “There’s a strong correlation between high achievement
and the ability to come to terms with life’s basic questions,” Drucker said. “I
think the most successful people are those who have a strong faith . . . there
is a very substantial correlation between religious faith, religious
commitment, and success as doers in the community.”
4. Make your
life your endgame. The only worthy goal is to make a meaningful life out of
an ordinary one, Drucker declared. He recommends setting one’s sights on
achievements that really matter, that will make a difference in the world, and
to set them far enough ahead of current achievements that the journey will be
demanding but worth the effort. “Make your life your endgame,” Drucker said.
5. Planning
doesn’t work. “Opportunity comes in over the transom,” Drucker insisted,
and that means one has to be flexible, ready to seize the right opportunities
when they come. “Too much planning can make you deaf to opportunity,” Drucker
said. “Opportunity knocks, but it knocks only once. You have to be ready for
the accident.”
6. Know your
values. “If you don’t respect a job, not only will you do a poor job of it,
but it will corrupt you, and eventually it may even kill you,” Drucker said.
“For example, ninety-nine percent of all physicians should not become hospital
administrators. Why? Because they have no respect for the job. They’re
physicians and they feel that hospital administration is a job for clerks.”
Knowing what you value and what you don’t can keep you from making some bad
choices.
7. Define what
finishing well means to you. “My definition of success changed a long time
ago,” Drucker said. “I love doing consulting work and writing—I regularly lose
track of time when I’m doing those things. But finishing well, and how I want
to be remembered, those are the things that matter now. Making a difference in
a few lives is a worthy goal. Having enabled a few people to do the things they
want to do that’s really what I want to be remembered for.”
8. Know the
difference between harvesting and planting. “For many years, I measured my
work by my output—mainly in terms of books and other writing that I was doing,”
Drucker said. “I was very productive for many years. I am not so productive
today, because these are years of harvesting rather than years of planting.”
One needs to know the difference between the two.
9. Good
intentions aren’t enough; define the results you want. The number of
non-profits and charitable organizations in this country has exploded in the
past several years, but many of them get poor results, Drucker said, because
“they don’t ask about results, and they don’t know what results they want in
the first place. They mean well and they have the best of intentions, but the
only thing good intentions are for (as the maxim says) is to pave the road to
hell.” To achieve the best results, Drucker said people must ask the right
questions and then partner with others who have the expertise, knowledge, and
discipline to get the right results.
10. Recognize
the downside to “no longer learning, no longer growing.” “I see more and
more people who make it to their mid-forties or beyond, and they’ve been very
successful,” Drucker said. “They’ve done very well in their work and career,
but in my experience, they end up in one of three groups. One group will
retire; they usually don’t live very long. The second group keeps on doing what
they’ve been doing, but they’re losing their enthusiasm, feeling less alive.
The third group keeps doing what they’ve been doing, but they’re looking for
ways to make a contribution. They feel they’ve been given a lot and they’re
looking for a chance to give back. They’re not satisfied with just writing
checks; they want to be involved, to help other people in a more positive way.”
And they’re the ones, Drucker said, who finish well. Peter Drucker has added
significance to the lives of many people over the span of decades and for that
we are grateful.
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