The best advice for 2011? Manage yourself

The best advice for 2011? Manage yourself
Success in difficult times comes to those who know themselves, by this I mean, their strengths, their values, their weaknesses and how they best perform under normal and difficult circumstances.
If you study the lives of great achievers throughout history, Einstein, Edison, Washington, Da Vinci or Mozart, you will find that they have the ability to manage themselves.
This factor is what makes them great achievers and they are rare exceptions, very unusual both in their talents and their accomplishments.
Most of us, even those of us with modest talents and skills, will have to learn to manage ourselves in order to have a chance to succeed in the difficult times we are going through and will be going through for at least a year or maybe even longer.
We will have to learn to develop and place ourselves in a position where we can make the greatest contribution. This is not only needed in moments of crisis, but actually in the 40 to 50 year working life most of us will go through.
Most people think they know what they are good at but in my experience they are usually wrong. More often people know what they are not good at and sometimes they are also wrong. And yet, we know that a person can perform well, consistently well, only from strength.
One can’t build performance on weaknesses, let alone on some talents and skills we don’t have at all.
Thru out my career as a speaker and consultant, I have tried with very good success, a technique I want to share with you. If you do only one thing different in 2011, this might be your best option.
Whenever you make a key decision or take action on a problem you are facing, write down what you will expect will happen. Six months later, compare the actual results of your decisions with your expectations. You will be very surprised.
I have been doing this for years and I have found out that I have an intuitive understanding of people oriented people, whether they are in human resources, management, social services or entrepreneurship.
I don’t resonate much with dogmatic or close minded people who think they have the right answer for every problem. They don’t realize that when you are a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
I believe that if you practice this method consistently, within a relatively short period of time, you will find where your strengths lie and believe me, this is the most important thing to know all the time, especially during tough times.
The method will show you what you are doing or not doing that strips you of the full benefits of your strengths. It will show you where you are not particularly qualified or competent. And finally, it will show you where you have absolutely no strengths or skills and you simply can’t perform.
Several implications for action follow from doing this self analysis I am suggesting you do.
First, it would be very wise if you concentrate on your strengths. Very important: Put yourself in a position where your strengths can produce results.
Second, work on improving your strengths. This self study will quickly show where you need to improve skills or acquire new ones. It also will show spaces in your knowledge and these spaces in knowledge can usually be resolved.
Mathematicians are born but everyone can learn Algebra.
Third, discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance or negative effects on your interpersonal relationships and overcome it.
Many people, far too many to be candid, with expertise in one particular area, are disrespectful of knowledge in other areas or believe that being intelligent is a substitute for knowledge or experience.
First rate computer technicians, for example, tend to take pride in not knowing anything about people. Human beings, they believe, are too much disorganized for the good technical mind.
Human resource professionals, on the other hand, often pride themselves on their ignorance of basic accounting or of computable methods altogether.
Taking pride in such ignorance is detrimental and self defeating. Go to work on acquiring the skills and knowledge you need so as to fully realize your strengths.
Finally, since I am running out of space, it is imperative that you work on your bad habits, the things you do that constrain your effectiveness, performance and results.
Such habits will constantly show up on your self-analysis.
For example, a person will realize that being late to every meeting or event will seriously affect his or her credibility. This will be the cause of many lost opportunities. Another person may find out that constantly making promises and not keeping them will force people to not believe in them with very negative consequences.
A manager may find that beautiful plans fail because he or she doesn’t follow through on them. Like so many intelligent people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But the reality is that bulldozers move mountains, ideas show where the bulldozers need to go and which mountains need to be moved.
This manager will need to know that the work doesn’t stop when the plan is finished. He must find the right people to carry out the plan and explain it to them in a convincing and effective way. He must adapt, change, modify the plan as it unfolds in real life and finally and most importantly, must decide when to stop pushing it or change to a new plan.
I wish you all, my dear readers, the best in 2011 and I thank you for reading my column and emailing me so often with comments and great ideas. I thank the Puerto Rico Daily Sun for the opportunity to express my views and try to be of help in improvingy our lives and or your businesses.