Home Book Notes Members Contact About
Scott Vejdani
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done - By Peter F. Drucker

The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done - By Peter F. Drucker

Date read: 2016-08-09
How strongly I recommend it: 9/10
(See my list of 150+ books, for more.)

Go to the Amazon page for details and reviews.

The essential book on how to be productive. Written over 50 years ago but still applies in today's work environment.

Contents:

  1. HOW TO LEVERAGE PEOPLE'S STRENGTHS
  2. TIME MANAGEMENT
  3. PRIORITIZATION
  4. DECISION MAKING
  5. MEETINGS
  6. HOW YOU SHOULD CONTRIBUTE

show more ▼

My Notes

Eight practices of an effective executive:

  1. They ask, "What needs to be done?"
  2. They ask, "What is right for the enterprise?"
  3. They develop action plans.
  4. They take responsibility for decisions.
  5. They take responsibility for communicating.
  6. They focus on opportunities rather than problems.
  7. They run productive meetings.
  8. They think and say "we" rather than "I".
Knowledge work is defined by its results.

Organizations are not more effective because they have better people. They have better people because they motivate to self-development through their standards, through their habits, through their climate.

Four major realities in which you have no control:
  1. The executive's time tends to belong to everybody else.
  2. Executives are forced to keep on "operating" unless they take positive action to change the reality in which they live and work. If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously, he will fritter himself away "operating."
  3. He is within an organization. He is effective only if and when other people make use of what he contributes.
  4. The executive is within an organization. Every executive sees inside as close and immediate reality. The higher up the organization he goes, the more will his attention be drawn to problems and challenges of the inside rather than to events on the outside.
Executives of necessity live and work withing an organization. Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside, the inside may blind them to the true reality.

Whenever knowledge workers perform well in large organizations, sr. executives take time out, on a regular schedule, to sit down with them, sometimes all the way down to green juinors, and ask: "What should we at the head of this organization know about your work? What do you want to tell me regarding this organization? Where do you see opportunitites we do not exploit? Where do you see dangers to which we are still blind? And, what do you want to know from me about the organization?"

An organization needs to bring in fresh people with fresh points of view fairly often. If it only promotes from within it soon becomes inbred and eventually sterile. But if at all possible, one does not bring in the newcomers where the risk is exorbitant-that is, into the top executive positions or into leadership of an important new activity. One brings them in just below the top and into an activity that is already defined and reasonably well understood.

Achievement depends less on ability in doing research than on the courage to go after opportunity.


HOW TO LEVERAGE PEOPLE'S STRENGTHS
To achieve results, one has to use all the available strengths - the strengths of associates, the strengths of the superior, and one's own strengths.

Do not make staffing decisions to minimize weaknesses but to maximize strength.

Strong people always have strong weaknesses too. Where there are peaks, there are valleys. And no one is strong in many areas.

Subordinates are paid to perform and not to please their superiors.

Always ask: "What do they contribute?", "What can they do uncommonly well?" Look for excellence in one major area, and not for performance that gets by all around.

"One cannot hire a hand-the whole man always comes with it."

The men who build first-class executive teams are not usually close to their immediate colleagues and subordinates.

4 rules for staffing for strength:
  1. Be on gaurd against the "impossible" job, the job that simply is not for normal human beings. Any job that has defeated two or three men in succession, even though each had performed well in his previous assignments, must be assumed unfit for human beings. It must be redesigned.

  2. Make each job demanding and big.

  3. Start with what a man can do rather than with what a job requires. All one should measure is performance.

    Appraisal procedure:
    1. "What has he/she done well?"
    2. "What, therefore, is he/she likely to be able to do well?"
    3. "What does he/she have to learn or to acquire to be able to get the full benefit from his strength?"
    4. "If I had a son or daughter, would I be willing to have him/her work under this person? If yes, why? If no, why?"

  4. To get strength one has to put up with weaknesses. It is the duty of the executive to remove ruthlessly anyone-and especially any manager-who consistently fails to perform with high distinction. To let such a man stay on corrupts the others.
Make the strengths of the boss productive by asking "What can my boss do really well?" "What has he done really well?" "What does he need to know to use his strength?" "What does he need to get from me to perform?" Do not worry too much over what the boss cannot do.

What are the things that I seem to be able to do with relative ease, while they come rather hard to other people?"

Only strength produces results. Weakness only produces headaches-and the absence of weakness produces nothing.


TIME MANAGEMENT
Effectiveness is a habit; that is, a complex of practices. And practices can always be learned:
Effective executives
  1. Know where their time goes.
  2. Focus on outward contribution. They gear their efforts to results rather than to work.
  3. Build on strengths.
  4. Concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce oustanding results.
  5. Make effective decisions.
Do not start with your tasks. Start with your time.

Three process step for time management:
  1. Recording time.
  2. Managing time.
  3. Consolidating time.
Effective Executive knows that to manage his time, he first has to know where it actually goes.

Have a the log run on yourself for three to four weeks at a streatch twice a year or so, on a regular schedule. After each such sample, rethink and rework their schedule.

To be effective, you need to be able to dispose of time in fairly large chunks.

Which of the activities on my time log could be done by somebody else just as well, if not better?

"Delegation" as the term is customarily used, is a misunderstanding-is indeed misdirection. But getting rid of anything that can be done by someody else so that one does not have to delegate but can really get to one's own work-that is a major improvement in effectiveness.

Effective executives have learned to ask systematically and without coyness: "What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness?"

There is not much risk that an executive will cut back too much. We usually tend to overrate rather than underrate our importance and to conclude that far too many things can only be done by ourselves.

Time-wastes often result from overstaffing. The work force that is too big for effectiveness, the work force that spends an increase amount of its time "interacting" rather than working.

Time-waster is malfunction in information. Also, information in the wrong form.

Sr. Executives rarely have as much as one quarter of their time truly at their disposal and available for the important matters. He knows that he needs large chunks of time and that small driblets are no time at all. Ideas to improve this: Work from home one day a week or schedule all the operating work - the meetings, reviews, problem-sessions - for two days a week or schedule a daily work period at home in the morning.

Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed.


PRIORITIZATION
After completing the original top-priority task, reset priorities rather than moving on to number two from the original list.

Ask yourself, "which of the two or three tasks at the top of the list you yourself are best suited to undertake? Then concentrate on that task; the others can be delegated.

The action plan is a statement of intentions rather than a commitment. It should be revised often, because every success creates new opportunities.

The action plan needs to create a system for checking the results against the expectations. First check comes halfway through the plan's time period. The second occurs at the end.

Time is an executive's scarcest and most precious resource.

Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.

The symptom to look for is the recurrent "crisis,", the crisis that comes back year after year. A crisis that recurs a second time is a crisis that must not occur again.

Do first things first and do one thing at a time.

Ask yourself, "Is this still worth doing?" And if it isn't, get rid of it so as to be able to concentrate on the few tasks that will really make a difference in the results of your job and in the performance of your organization.

No task is completed unless other people have taken it on as their own, have accepted new ways of doing old things or the necessity for doing something new, and have otherwise made th executive's "completed" project their own daily routine.

Courage rather than analysis dictates the truly important rules for identifying priorities:
  1. Pick the future as against the past.
  2. Focus on opportunity rather than on problem.
  3. Choose your own direction - rather than climb on the bandwagon.
  4. Aim high, aim for something that will make a difference, rather than for something that is "safe" and easy to do.

DECISION MAKING
The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.

Is the decision really necessary? One alternative is always the alternative of doing nothing.

Act if on balance the benefits greatly outweigh cost and risk and act or do not act; but do not "hedge" or compromise.

A decision has not been made until people know: Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.

Treat change as an opportunity rather than a threat. Systematically look at changes, inside and outside the corporation, and ask,"How can we exploit this change as an opportunity for our enterprise?"

Put the best people on opportunitites rather than on problems.

Make personnel decisions slowly and make them several times before you really commit yourself.

What do we have to know to test the validity of this hypothesis? Insist on alternatives of measurement so that you can choose the one appropriate one.

Insist that people who voice an opinion also take responsibility for defining what factual findings can be expected and should be looked for.

No matter how high emotions run, no matter how certain you are that the other side is completely wrong and has no case at all, your want to make the right decision forces you to see opposition as your means to think through the alternatives. Use conflict of opinion as your tool to make sure all major aspects of an important matter are looked at carefully.

Elements of the decision making process:
  1. The clear realization that the problem was generic and could only be solved through a decision which established a rule, a principle.

    Ask yourself" "Is this a generic situation or an exception?" The generic always has to be answered through a rule, a principle. The exceptional can only be handled as such and as it comes.

    Always assume initially that the problem is generic. Assume that the event that clamors for your attention is in reality a symptom. Look for the true problem. Do not be content with doctoring the symptom alone.

    "A country with many laws is a country of incompetent lawyers." It is a country which attempts to solve every problem as a unique phenomenon, rather than as a special case under general rules of law. Executives who make many decisions are both lazy and ineffectual.

  2. The definition of the specifications which the answer to the problem had to satisfy, that is, of the "boundary conditions."

    Clear specifications as to what the decision has to accomplish. What are the objectives the decision has to reach? What are the minimum goals it has to attain? What are the conditions it has to satisfy?

    Defining the specifications and setting the boundary conditions cannot be done on the "facts" in any decision of importance. It always has to be done on interpretation.

  3. The thinking through what is "right," that is, the solution which will fully satisfy the specifications before attention is given to the compromises, adaptations, and concessions needed to make the decision acceptable.

    One has to start out with what is right rather than what is acceptable (let alone who is right) precisely because one always has to compromise in the end.

  4. The building into the decision of the action to carry it out.

    No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone's work assignment and responsibility. Until then, there are only good intentions.

    Who has to know of this decision? What action has to be taken? Who is to take it? And what does the action have to be so that the people who have to do it can do it?

  5. The "feedback" which tests the validity and effectiveness of the decision against the actual course of events.

    Feedback has to be built into the decision to provide continuous testing, against actual events, of the expectations that underlie the decision.

    One needs organized information for the feedback. One needs reports and figures. But unless one builds one's feedback around direct exposure to reality-unless one disciplines oneself to go out and look-one condemns oneself to a sterlie dogmatism and with it to ineffectiveness.

MEETINGS
Different kinds of meetings require different forms of preparation and different results.

A meeting to prepare a statement, an announcement, or a press release - one member has to prepare a draft beforehand.

A meeting to make an announcement.

A meeting in which one member reports.

A meeting in which several or all members report.

A meeting to inform the convening executive.

Don't think or say "I." Think and say "we."

Listen first, speak last.

Time-waster is malorganization. Its symptom is an excess of meetings.

As a rule, meetings should never be allowed to become the main demand of an executive's time.

Ask yourself: "Why are we having this meeting? Do we need a decision, do we want to inform, or do we want to make clear to ourselves what we should be doing?"

Always state at the outset of a meeting the specific purpose and contribution it is to acheive. And at the end go back to the opening statement and relate the final conclusion to the original intent.


HOW YOU SHOULD CONTRIBUTE
The focus on contribution is the key to effectiveness.

Every organization needs performance in 3 major areas:
  1. Direct results.
  2. Building of values and their reaffirmation.
  3. Building and developing people of tomorrow.
Cause of executive failure is inability or unwillingness to change with the demands of a new position.

The task is not to breed generalists. It is to enable the specialist to make himself and his speciality effective.

Effective excecutives find themselves asking: "What contrubution from me do you require to make your contribution to the organization? When do you need this, how do you need it, and in what form?"

Effective excecutives tend to ask their people: "What are the contributions for which this organization and I, your superior, should hold you accountable? What should we expect of you? What is the best utilization of your knowledge and your ability?"

The effective work is actually done in and by teams of people of diverse knowledges and skills. These people have to work together voluntarily and according to the logic of the situation and the demands of the task, rather than according to a formal jurisdictional structure.

The man who asks of himself, "What is the most important contriubtion I can make to the performance of this organization?" asks in effect, "What self-development do I need? What knowledge and skill do I have to acquire to amke the contribution I should be making? What strengths do I have to put to work? What standards do I have to set myself?"

People grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment.