A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE IS INCONSISTENT ■ 85
generated a firestorm of comments from students. I still recall some of
these today. They went something like this:
You cannot ignore how your boss will react to your actions, even if
ethically and technically your actions are correct.
Disregarding the fear of job loss may be okay in theory, but it’s a jungle
out there. Ignoring the possibility that you could be fired can
lead to being fired.
Fear of losing my job isn’t the last thing I think of—it is the first thing.
Peter absorbed these comments, but repeated his earlier statement that
fear of job loss was simply incompatible <strong>with</strong> taking responsibility and
excising the power entrusted to the manager. He concluded that, “If you
have this fear, you will improve your performance by ignoring it. Moreover,
ethically it is what every manager should do.”
At the time, I was surprised that this fear was clearly so prevalent in the
middle- and upper-level managers who were my classmates. I did not consider
that I had such a fear myself. So I felt there was little for me to do in
order to raise my performance by ignoring a fear which I didn’t have. As I
was to learn shortly it might have been better had I had a little bit of such
a fear.
I Am Forced to Resign My Job
I was head of research and development and fortunate in having a great
team of engineers to work <strong>with</strong>, most of whom I had hired myself.
Because of these engineers and my rapport <strong>with</strong> our customers, we had
achieved some terrific results during my three years <strong>with</strong> the company.
Research and development sales were ten times what they were when I
came aboard. In fact, my team had won the largest research and development
contract in this company’s forty-year history. They also developed
a product that later became the standard in not only the U.S. armed
forces, but for many foreign countries. I was particularly proud of this
achievement because on my first visit to our Air Force customers after
getting the job <strong>with</strong> this company, I was told that due to a previous
research and development problem a couple of years earlier, my new
company rated very low in the eyes of the Air Force.