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Effective Executive: Preface

By Peter Drucker

effective executive cover

Amazon Link: The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Harperbusiness Essentials)

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Management books usually deal with managing other people. The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness. That one can truly manage other people is by no means adequately proven. But one can always manage oneself. Indeed, executives who do not manage themselves for effectiveness cannot possibly expect to manage their associates and subordinates. Management is largely by example. Executives who do not know how to make themselves effective in their own job and work set the wrong example.

Managing Oneself

Managing Oneself contents

Amazon.com link: Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics)

Early career work: creating a life-long foundation

The progression I see: Early Career Work then Managing Oneself then Effectiveness along with habits, knowledges and skills acquired over the years while practicing the principle of weight control (every time something new is added something old is dropped)

Living in More Than One World in parallel


To be reasonably effective it is not enough for the individual to be intelligent, to work hard or to be knowledgeable. Effectiveness is something separate, something different. But to be effective also does not require special gifts, special aptitude, or special training. Effectiveness as an executive demands doing certain—and fairly simple—things. It consists of a small number of practices, the practices that are presented and discussed in this book. But these practices are not "inborn." In forty-five years of work as a consultant with a large number of executives in a wide variety of organizations—large and small; businesses, government agencies, labor unions, hospitals, universities, community services; American, European, Latin American and Japanese—I have not come across a single "natural": an executive who was born effective. All the effective ones have had to learn to be effective. And all of them then had to practice effectiveness until it became habit. But all the ones who worked on making themselves effective executives succeeded in doing so. Effectiveness can be learned—and it also has to be learned.

Effectiveness is what executives are being paid for, whether they work as managers who are responsible for the performance of others as well as their own, or as individual professional contributors responsible for their own performance only.

Without effectiveness there is no "performance," no matter how much intelligence and knowledge goes into the work, no matter how many hours it takes.

Yet it is perhaps not too surprising that we have so far paid little attention to the effective executive. Organizations—whether business enterprises, large government agencies, labor unions, large hospitals or large universities—are, after all, brand new. A century ago almost no one had even much contact with such organizations beyond an occasional trip to the local post office to mail a letter.

And effectiveness as an executive means effectiveness in and through an organization.

Until recently there was little reason for anyone to pay much attention to the effective executive or to worry about the low effectiveness of so many of them.

Now, however, most people—especially those with even a fair amount of schooling—can expect to spend all their working lives in an organization of some kind.

Society has become a society of organizations in all developed countries.

Now the effectiveness of the individual depends increasingly on his or her ability to be effective in an organization, to be effective as an executive. And the effectiveness of a modern society and its ability to perform—perhaps even its ability to survive—depend increasingly on the effectiveness of the people who work as executives in the organizations.

The effective executive is fast becoming a key resource for society, and effectiveness as an executive a prime requirement for individual accomplishment and achievement—for young people at the beginning of their working lives fully as much as for people in mid-career.


Effectiveness Must Be learned

This is not a textbook, of course—if only because effectiveness, while capable of being learned, surely cannot be taught. Effectiveness is, after all, not a "subject," but a self-discipline. …

Effectiveness reveals itself as crucial to a person's self-development; to organization development; and to the fulfillment and viability of modern society. …

There is much more to the self-development of an executive than his training in effectiveness. He has to acquire knowledges and skills. He has to learn a good many new work habits as he proceeds along his career, and he will occasionally have to unlearn some old work habits. (Calendarize these developments) But knowledges, skills, and habits, no matter how accomplished, will avail the executive little unless he first develops himself in effectiveness. …

There is nothing exalted about being an effective executive. It is simply doing one's job like thousands of others. There is little danger that anyone will compare this essay on training oneself to be an effective executive with, say, Kierkegaard's great self-development tract, Training in Christianity. There are surely higher goals for a man's life than to become an effective executive. But only because the goal is so modest can we hope at all to achieve it; that is, to have the large number of effective executives modern society and its organizations need. …

If we required saints, poets, or even first-rate scholars to staff our knowledge positions, the large-scale organization would simply be absurd and impossible. The needs of large-scale organization have to be satisfied by common people achieving uncommon performance. This is what the effective executive has to make himself able to do. Though this goal is a modest one, one that everyone should be able to reach if he works at it, the self-development of an effective executive is true development of the person. It goes from mechanics to attitudes, values and character, from procedure to commitment.


Introduction: What Makes An Effective Executive?

An effective executive does not need to be a leader in the sense that the term is now most commonly used. Harry Truman did not have one ounce of charisma, for example, yet he was among the most effective chief executives in U.S. history. Similarly, some of the best business and nonprofit CEOs I've worked with over a 65-year consulting career (twenty years after the first part was written) were not stereotypical leaders. They were all over the map in terms of their personalities, attitudes, values, strengths, and weaknesses. They ranged from extroverted to nearly reclusive, from easy-going to controlling, from generous to parsimonious.

What made them all effective is that they followed the same eight practices:

The first two practices gave them the knowledge they needed.

The next four helped them convert this knowledge into effective action.

The last two ensured that the whole organization felt responsible and accountable.

We've just reviewed eight practices of effective executives. I'm going to throw in one final, bonus practice. This one's so important that I'll elevate it to the level of a rule: Listen first, speak last.


Effective Executive Contents

  • Five practices—for getting the right things done

    • Managing the small amount of time that can be brought under their control.

    • Focus on outward contribution “What results are expected of me”?

    • Building on strength

      • Own strength

      • Strengths of superiors, colleagues, and subordinates

      • Strengths in the situation

    • Concentration on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results

      • Set priorities and stay with priority decisions.

      • Rules for identifying priorities

        • Pick the future against the past

        • Focus on opportunity rather than a problem

        • Choose own direction rather than climbing on the bandwagon

        • Aim high

          • Something that will make a difference

          • Rather than something “safe” & easy to do.

          • Ellaboration

            • Achievement goes to the people who pick their research priorities by the opportunity and who consider other criteria only as qualifiers rather than as determinants

              Similarly, in business the successful companies are not those that work at developing new products for their existing line but those that aim at innovating new technologies or new businesses. As a rule it is just as risky, just as arduous, and just as uncertain to do something small that is new as it is to do something big that is new. It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem—which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday

    • Make effective decisions

      • A matter of system

      • Right steps in the right sequence

      • A few fundamental decisions

      • The right strategy


Screaming!!! Attention!!!

See What Executives Should Remember for a broader "work" radar.


See The Effective Executive for a detailed outline.

See Effective Executive preview for a dynamic outline of The Effective Executive.

See The Effective Executive in Action for an initial "workbook" approach.

For a broader "life" frame see Living in more than one world : how Peter Drucker's wisdom can inspire your life by Bruce Rosenstein.

The Daily Drucker is an even more comprehensive "radar" loading resource.

Early career work and Managing Oneself are basic foundations.

Consider the resources above along side Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change (the IBM turnaround) by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. This comparison provides a "time-scape" view of our unfolding social world.

Please consider calendarizing these books and the other concepts on this page. Reading is useless without applying. Applying ain't easy—think corporate crisis stories.

This work is the doorway to a genuinely interesting life.

        



Keywords and tags: career-evolution career-change career-early-work career-knowledge-worker career-management career-skills career-education tlnkweffectiveexecutive



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