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efforts which require a fairly big quantum of time to bear fruit. Yet to get even that half-day or those two weeks of really productive time requires self-discipline and an iron determination to say “No.”
The effective executive does not, in other words, truly commit himself beyond the one task he concentrates on right now. Then he reviews the situation and picks the next one task that now comes first.
He saw to it that the yardsticks throughout the system by which managers and their operations were judged measured service fulfillment rather than profit performance.
1. The first question the effective decision-maker asks is: “Is this a generic situation or an exception?” “Is this something that underlies a great many occurrences? Or is the occurrence a unique event that needs to be dealt with as such?” The generic always has to be answered through a rule, a principle. The exceptional can only be handled as such and as it comes.
By far the most common mistake is to treat a generic situation as if it were a series of unique events; that is, to be pragmatic when one lacks the generic understanding and principle. This inevitably leads to frustration and futility.
If the greatest rewards are given for behavior contrary to that which the new course of action requires, then everyone will conclude that this contrary behavior is what the people at the top really want and are going to reward.
The effective executive, therefore, asks: “What do we have to know to test the validity of this hypothesis?” “What would the facts have to be to make this opinion tenable?” And he makes it a habit—in himself and in the people with whom he works—to think through and spell out what needs to be looked at, studied, and tested.
“Then,” continued Mr. Sloan, “I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.”
No matter how high his emotions run, no matter how certain he is that the other side is completely wrong and has no case at all, the executive who wants to make the right decision forces himself to see opposition as his means to think through the alternatives. He uses conflict of opinion as his tool to make sure all major aspects of an important matter are looked at carefully.
conditions in respect to which one can, without being unduly optimistic, expect that they will take care of themselves even if nothing is done. If the answer to the question “What will happen if we do nothing?” is “It will take care of itself,” one does not interfere. Nor does one interfere if the condition, while annoying, is of no importance and unlikely to make any difference anyhow.
Executives are not paid for doing things they like to do. They are paid for getting the right things done—most of all in their specific task, the making of effective decisions.
1. The first step toward effectiveness is a procedure: recording where the time goes.
The analysis of the executive’s time, the elimination of the unnecessary time-wasters,
2. The next step, however, in which the executive is asked to focus his vision on contribution advances from the procedural to the conceptual, from mechanics to analysis, and from efficiencies to concern with results.
3. Making strengths productive is fundamentally an attitude expressed in behavior.
4. Chapter 5, “First Things First,” serves as antiphon to the earlier chapter, “Know Thy Time.”
The executive who works at making strengths productive—his own as well as those of others—works at making organizational performance compatible with personal achievement. He works at making his knowledge area become organizational opportunity.
And by focusing on contribution, he makes his own values become organization results.
“The great majority of executives,” Drucker writes, “are occupied with efforts rather than with results. They worry over what the organization and their superiors ‘owe’ them and should do for them. And they are conscious above all of the authority they ‘should have.’ As a result, they render themselves ineffectual.” The effective executive aims beyond himself by focusing on contribution. This requires turning one’s attention away from “one’s own specialty, one’s own narrow skills, one’s own department,” Drucker writes, “and toward the performance of the whole.”
Courage manifests in four specific ways of taking action: “Pick the future as against the past. Focus on opportunity rather than on problem. Choose your own direction—rather than climb on the bandwagon. And aim high, aim for something that will make a difference, rather than for something that is ‘safe’ and easy to do.”
