The Effective Executive

by Peter F. Drucker

Overall Effectiveness

Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results.

Productivity for the knowledge worker means the ability to get the right things done. It means effectiveness.

Assumption is that effectiveness can be learned and that is my over-arching goal, to become more effective.

1. Know Where My Time Goes

Effective executives know where their time goes. They work systematically at managing the little of their time that can brought under their control.

Example template to track your time - a mashup of Drucker and Jim Collins - essentially - provides visibility into tasks that energize/ drain you and determine what you need to stop doing/ do less of/ start doing

• Do you have a stop doing list? What do you put on your stop doing list?

2. Focus on Outward Contribution

Effective executives focus on outward contribution. They gear their efforts to results rather than to work. They start out with the question, “What results are expected of me?” rather than with the work to be done, let alone with its techniques and tools.

3. Build on My Strengths

Effective executives build on strengths – their own strengths, the strengths of their superiors, colleagues, and subordinates; and on the strengths in the situation, that is, on what they can do. They do not build on weakness. They do not start out with the things they cannot do.

4. Concentrate on Areas Where Superior Performance Will Produce Outstanding Results

Effective executives concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results. They force themselves to set priorities and stay with their priority decisions. They know that they have no choice but to do first things first – and second things not at all. The alternative is to get nothing done.

5. Effective Decisions

Effective executives, finally, make effective decisions. They know that this is, above all, a matter of system – of the right steps in the right sequence. They know that an effective decision is always a judgment based on “dissenting opinions” rather than on “consensus on facts.” And they know that to make many decisions fast means to make the wrong decisions. What is needed are few, but fundamental, decisions. What is needed is the right strategy rather than razzle-dazzle tactics.