Managing for Results
Executives should spend more time and thought on the future of their business. (page 3)
There are three different dimensions to the economic task : 1) The present business must be made effective; 2) its potential must be idenified and realized; 3) it must be made into a different business for a different future. (4)
Neither results nor resources exist inside the business. (5)
Business can be defined as a process that converts an outside resource, namely knowledge, into outside results, namely economic values. (5)
Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems. (5)
Resources, to produce results, must be allocated to opportunities rather than to problems. (6)
The pertinent question is not how to do things right but how to find the right things to do, and to concentrate resources and efforts on them. (6)
Economic results are earned only by leadership, not by mere competence. (6)
Any leadership position is transitory and likely to be shortlived. (7)
Ressources and efforts will normally allocate themselves to the 90 per cent of events that produce practically no results. (10)
Concentration is the key to economic results. (11)
Economic results require that staff efforts be concentated on the few activities that are capable of producing significant business results (12)
What is the simplest method that will give us adquate results ? And what are the simplest tools ? (16)
To make business effective the executive has available three well-tried and tested approaches :
He can start with a model of the "ideal business" which would produce maximum results from the available markets and knowledge - or at least those results that, over a long period, are likely to be most favorable. (131)
He can try to maximize opportunities by focusing the available resources on the most attractive possibilities and devoting them to obtaining the greatest possible results. (132)
He can maximize resources so that those opportunities are found - il not created - that endow the available high-quality resources with the greatest possible impact. (132)
There are two distinct categories of opportunities :
Replacement of present products, activities, and efforts which are almost right, by products, activities, and efforts that are completely right. (146)
Innovations, the design and development of something new, as yet unknown and not in existence, which will establish a new economic configuration out of the old. (147)
The right structure does not guarantee results. But the wrong structure aborts results and smothers even the best-directed efforts. (216)