HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself 2-Volume Collection

Reclaim Your Job

by Sumantra Ghoshal and Heike Bruch

ASK MOST MANAGERS WHAT GETS in the way of success at work, and you hear the familiar litany of complaints: Not enough time. Shrinking resources. Lack of opportunity. When you look more closely, you begin to see that these are, for the most part, excuses. What gets in the way of managers’ success is something much more personal—a deep uncertainty about acting according to their own best judgment. Rather than doing what they really need to do to advance the company’s fortunes—and their own careers—they spin their wheels doing what they presume everyone else wants them to do.

Over the past five years, we have studied hundreds of managers as they have gone about their daily work in a variety of ...