ON WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE by Peter F. Drucker

“From Frankfurt I moved to London in 1933, first working as a securities analyst in a large insurance company and then, a year later, moving to a small but fast-growing private bank as an economist and the executive secretary to the three senior partners. One, the founder, was a man in his seventies; the two others were in their mid-thirties.

At first I worked exclusively with the two younger men, but after I had been with the firm some three months or so, the founder called me into his office and said, ‘I didn’t think much of you when you came here and still don’t think much of you, but you are even more stupid than I thought you would be, and much more stupid than you have any right to be.’

Since the two younger partners had been praising me to the skies each day, I was dumbfounded.

And then the old gentlemen said, ‘I understand you did very good securities analysis at the insurance company. But if we had wanted you to do securities-analysis work, we would have left you where you were. You are now the executive secretary to the partners, yet you continue to do securities analysis. What should you be doing now, to be effective in your new job?’

. . . I totally changed my behavior and my work. Since then, when I have a new assignment, I ask myself the question, ‘What do I need to do, now that I have a new assignment, to be effective?’

Every time, it is something different. Discovering what it is requires concentration on the things that are crucial to the new challenge, the new job, the new task.’