Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
Effectiveness must be learned as an executive is paid for being effective asserts Drucker, the management guru. Effectiveness is the ability to get the right things done and is a habit, a complex of practices that have to be acquired. Outlined below are the steps that could make you more effective according to his book
- Record where the time goes (Know thy time) and analyze the executive’s time (pruning of unnecessary activities) - this action alone will make a man more effective. He needs to be able to dispose of time in fairly large chunks for maximum effectiveness. Identify the time wasters which follow from lack of system or foresight. A crisis that recurs a second time is a crisis that must not occur again. The recurrent crisis is simply a symptom of slovenliness and laziness.
- Focus outwards on your contribution to the organization with concern for results rather than efforts and stress on responsibility. Think through who uses your output and what the user needs to know. Focus on contribution supplies four basic requirements of effective human relations : communications, teamwork, self-development and development of others.
- What is the most important contribution I can make to the performance of this organization?
- What self-development do I need? What knowledge and skills do I need to make the contribution and what standards do I have to set myself?
- Making strengths productive - integrate individual purpose and organization needs appropriately. One has a pretty good idea whether one works better in the morning or at night. One knows whether one works best by making a great many drafts or one meticulous session.
- What are the things that I seem to be able to do with relative ease ? To be effective he builds on what he can do and does it the way hr has found out works best. One feeds the opportunities and starves the problems.
- First things first and one thing at a time. Identify priorities by
- Picking future as against the past
- Focus on opportunity rather than on problem
- Choose your own direction
- Aim High, aim for something that will make a difference.
- Effective decision concerns with rational action. Effective decisions do not flow from consensus of facts but from clash and conflict of divergent opinions.