More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I have never encountered an executive who remains effective while tackling more than two tasks at a time.
He asked himself which of the two or three tasks at the top of the list he himself was best suited to undertake. Then he concentrated on that task; the others he delegated.
The action plan is a statement of intentions rather than a commitment. It must not become a straitjacket. It should be revised often, because every success creates new opportunities. So does every failure.
needs to create a system for checking the results against the expectations.
Without an action plan, the executive becomes a prisoner of events. And without check-ins to reexamine the plan as events unfold, the executive has no way of knowing which events really matter and which are only noise.
Take responsibility for decisions A decision has not been made until people know: • the name of the person accountable for carrying it out; • the deadline; • the names of the people who will be affected by the decision and therefore have to know about, understand, and approve it—or at least not be strongly opposed to it; and • the names of the people who have to be informed of the decision, even if they are not directly affected by it.
Good executives focus on opportunities rather than problems. Problems have to be taken care of, of course; they must not be swept under the rug. But problem solving, however necessary, does not produce results. It prevents damage. Exploiting opportunities produces results.
Effective executives put their best people on opportunities rather than on problems.
In the United States, the complaint is common that the company president—or any other senior officer—still continues to run marketing or the plant, even though he is now in charge of the whole business and should be giving his time to its direction.
What the executive needs are criteria which enable him to work on the truly important, that is, on contributions and results, even though the criteria are not found in the flow of events.
The fewer people, the smaller, the less activity inside, the more nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reason for existence: the service to the environment.
What seems to be wanted is universal genius, and universal genius has always been in scarce supply. The experience of the human race indicates strongly that the only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetent.
They start by finding out where their time actually goes. Then they attempt to manage their time and to cut back unproductive demands on their time. Finally they consolidate their “discretionary” time into the largest possible continuing units. This three-step process:
recording time, • managing time, and • consolidating time is the foundation of executive effectiveness.
Since the knowledge worker directs himself, he must understand what achievement is expected of him and why.
“No secret—I have simply accepted that the first name I come up with is likely to be the wrong name—and I therefore retrace the whole process of thought and analysis a few times before I act.”
The first step toward executive effectiveness is therefore to record actual time-use.
At a minimum, effective executives have the log run on themselves for three to four weeks at a stretch twice a year or so, on a regular schedule.
One has to find the nonproductive, time-wasting activities and get rid of them if one possibly can.
“What would happen if this were not done at all?”
“Which of the activities on my time log could be done by somebody else just as well, if not better?”
The first look at the time record makes it abundantly clear that there just is not time enough to do the things the executive himself considers important, himself wants to do, and is himself committed to doing.
But getting rid of anything that can be done by somebody 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.
“What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness?”
for a routine puts down in systematic, step-by-step form what a very able man learned in surmounting yesterday’s crisis.
There is a fairly reliable symptom of overstaffing. If the senior people in the group—and of course the manager in particular—spend more than a small fraction of their time, maybe one tenth, on “problems of human relations,” on feuds and frictions, on jurisdictional disputes and questions of cooperation, and so on, then the work force is almost certainly too large.
Wherever a time log shows the fatty degeneration of meetings—whenever, for instance, people in an organization find themselves in meetings a quarter of their time or more—there is time-wasting malorganization.
This was how the bank president handled his time. Monday and Friday he had his operating meetings, saw senior executives on current matters, was available to important customers, and so on. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons were left unscheduled—for whatever might come up; and something of course always did, whether urgent personnel problems, a surprise visit by one of the bank’s representatives from abroad or by an important customer, or a trip to Washington. But in the mornings of these three days he scheduled the work on the major matters—in chunks of ninety minutes each.
Only a few say, “It’s my job to give our managers the information they need to make the right decisions,” or “I am responsible for finding out what products the customer will want tomorrow,” or “I have to think through and prepare the decisions the president will have to face tomorrow.”
To ask, “What can I contribute?” is to look for the unused potential in the job.
Executives who do not ask themselves, “What can I contribute?” are not only likely to aim too low, they are likely to aim at the wrong things.
It needs direct results; building of values and their reaffirmation; and building and developing people for tomorrow.
Direct results always come first.
People adjust to the level of the demands made on them. The executive who sets his sights on contribution raises the sights and standards of everyone with whom he works.
“Are we doing the best we can do to help this patient?”
“What can I and no one else do which, if done really well, would make a real difference to this company?”
“What contribution 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?”
Executives in an organization do not have good human relations because they have a “talent for people.” They have good human relations because they focus on contribution in their own work and in their relationships with others.
The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations: • communications; • teamwork; • self-development; and • development of others.
“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?”
Because information had to be handled and transmitted by people, it was always distorted by communications; that is, by opinion, impression, comment, judgment, bias, and so on. Now suddenly we are in a situation in which information is largely impersonal and, therefore, without any communications content. It is pure information.
The man who asks of himself, “What is the most important contribution 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 make the contribution I should be making? What strengths do I have to put to work? What standards do I have to set myself?”
bosses—always starts out with what a man should be able to do well—and then demands that he really do it.
Organization is the specific instrument to make human strengths redound to performance while human weakness is neutralized and largely rendered harmless.
The effective executive therefore first makes sure that the job is well designed. And if experience tells him otherwise, he does not hunt for genius to do the impossible. He redesigns the job. He knows that the test of organization is not genius. It is its capacity to make common people achieve uncommon performance.
A young man who has the right strength for one organization may be a total misfit in another, which from the outside looks just the same.
a. “What has he [or she] done well?” b. “What, therefore, is he likely to be able to do well?” c. “What does he have to learn or to acquire to be able to get the full benefit from his strength?” d. “If I had a son or daughter, would I be willing to have him or her work under this person?” i. “If yes, why?” ii. “If no, why?”
“What are the things,” he asks, “that I seem to be able to do with relative ease, while they come rather hard to other people?”
In every area of effectiveness within an organization, one feeds the opportunities and starves the problems.
The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one leader than it is to raise the performance of a whole mass. He therefore makes sure that he puts into the leadership position, into the standard-setting, the performance-making position, the man who has the strength to do the outstanding, the pace-setting job.
