Peter Drucker: The Effective Executive – The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

How was the book?

Peter Drucker is king of listing things. It all starts with his main messages. He has two main messages on how to become the effective executive. To become effective the executive needs to do certain simple things. And to learn how to become the effective executive. ”All the effective ones have had to learn to be effective”, because effectiveness is not inborn.

What are the key learnings?

How to become the effective executive? The first you have to manage oneself for effectiveness. Second, to learn to use the scarcest resource – time, correctly. Third, you have to have an action plan otherwise you will become a prisoner of events. Fourth, not only executives decisions matter – decisions made at every level matter.

There are eight simple practices that an effective executive must follow:

1. They ask ”What needs to be done?”
2. They ask ”What is right for the enterprise?”
3. They develop action plans.
4. They took responsibility for decisions.
5. They took responsibility for communicating.
6. They were focused on opportunities rather than problems.
7. They ran productive meetings.
8. They thought and said ”we” rather than ”I”.

The first two gives them the knowledge they need. The next four helped the to convert this knowledge into effective action. The last two ensured that the whole organization felt responsible and accountable.

Chester Barnard (1938) brought up the wisdom that organizations are held together by information rather than by ownership or command.

Executive realities are:

• The time belongs to everybody else than the executive.
• Executive himself have to change, otherwise nothing changes.
• Ineffectiveness comes from within the organization.
• Executive is in bubble, because he is within an organization.

Don’t miss the tide – changes in the trends. These will determine your success or failure.

How should we change according to the book?

First of all the executive is expected to get the right things done. Brilliant insight is not an achievement, getting the right things done is. Effectiveness is what executives are being paid for. Without effectiveness there is no performance.

Executive is not the same thing as a leader. Only few people have the same qualities – being a leader and an executive. But the habits of effectiveness can be learned. Five essential habits are:

1. Know Thy Time. Know where your time goes.
2. Focus on outward contribution – results.
3. Build on strengths.
4. First things first. Concentrate on few major areas.
5. Make effective decisions.

Know thy time; start with your time – not tasks, by managing your time and cut back unproductive timeconsumers, because time is the only limiting factor. Ask yourself ”What would happen if this were not done at all?”

How to prune the time-wasters:

1. Identify time-wasters?
2. Maybe your organization is overstaffed?
3. Malorganization generates excess meeting?
4. Malfunction in information?

Top management should always be asking from himself ”What Can I Contribute”. It’s his way of keeping track that he accountable for the performance of the whole. ”To focus on contribution is to focus on effectiveness.” Performance is needed in three major areas:

·      Direct results comes always first.

·      Building values and their affirmation.

·      Building and developing people for tomorrow.

Top managements contribution is needed in these areas:

·      Communications which is in the center of managerial attention.

·      Teamwork that makes things click.

·      Individual self-development.

·      Development of others.

The effective executive knows that every people-decision is a gamble and that their subordinates are not paid to please their superiors; they are paid to perform. That’s why the effective executive should concentrate on hiring people with strengths that he or his team is missing. ”One feeds the opportunities and starves the problems.” Also not to hire people on an ”undoable job”, a man killer. What is undoable job? It’s any job where two or three men is succession have been defeated although these individuals have been performing well in previous assignments. 

Staffing from strength starts by:

1.    The effective executive must make sure that the job is well-designed.

2.    Make each and every job demanding and big.

3.    Start by looking what the man can do (right people on the bus and right people on right places).

4.    Remember to put up with weaknesses.

Effectiveness is concentration, because the effective executive ”do first things first and they do one thing at a time”. Concentration is the effective executive’s ”only hope of becoming the master of time and events instead of their whipping boy.”

The effective executive always work under disagreements. It’s part of the package. Main reasons for disagreements are:

·      Without disagreements one becomes prisoner of the organization.

·      They provide alternatives.

·      It gives a possibility to ask that is the decision necessary, because it is a risk of shock.

To make decisions is the specific executive task. Right decisions will grow from the clash and conflict of different opinions and from consideration of competing alternatives. ”Yes” or ”no” decisions are not decisions. Decisions are judgements. Decisions are always a choice between ”almost right” and ”probably wrong”. The effective executive makes effective decisions via s systematic process. The elements of effective decisions are:

·      Strategic vs. generic. He has think through what is strategic and what is generic. Always assume that the problem to be solved is a generic and there is a rule how to solve it.

·      Goals; what are the objectives the decision has to reach i.e. what goals to reach. For example shall the decision increase market share.

·      Do the right thing; what is right rather than acceptable.

·      Execute; turn the decision into action.

·      Get feedback. Follow the consequences of the decision, did it reach the goals, do you have to iterate. 

What should I personally do?

Executives are not paid for doing things they like to do. They are paid for getting the right things done.

Summary

The book in six words – Don’t be a prisoner of events.