The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Harperbusiness Essentials)

by Peter F. Drucker

he summarized the discussion and its conclusions and spelled out any work

assignment decided upon in the meeting (including a decision to hold another meeting on the subject or to study an issue). He specified the deadline and the executive who was to be accountable for the assignment. He sent a copy of the memo to everyone who’d been present at the meeting.

Effective executives know that any given meeting is either productive or a total waste of time.

Effective executives know that they have ultimate responsibility, which can be neither shared nor delegated.

Listen first, speak last.

Effectiveness is a discipline. And, like every discipline, effectiveness can be learned and must be earned.

Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results. By themselves, they only set limits to what can be attained.

Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective. This is not capable of being measured by any of the yardsticks for manual work.

The knowledge worker cannot be supervised closely or in detail. He can only be helped. But he must direct himself, and he must direct himself toward performance and contribution, that is, toward effectiveness.

The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his being effective, on his being able to achieve.* If effectiveness is lacking in his work, his commitment to work and to contribution will soon wither, and he will become a time-server going through the motions from 9 to 5.

And productivity for the knowledge worker means the ability to get the right things done. It means effectiveness.

Every knowledge worker in modern organization is an “executive” if, by virtue of his position or knowledge, he is responsible for a contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organization to perform and to obtain results.

whether a knowledge worker is an executive does not depend on whether he manages people or not.

Knowledge work is not defined by quantity. Neither is knowledge work defined by its costs. Knowledge work is defined by its results. And for these, the size of the group and the magnitude of the managerial job are not even symptoms.