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Kindle Notes & Highlights
#1: First, manage thyself.
#2: Do what you’re made for.
#3: Work how you work best (and let others do the same).
#4: Count your time, and make it count.
do only one thing at a time;
First, create unbroken blocks for individual think time, preferably during the most lucid time of day; these pockets of quietude might be only ninety minutes, but even the busiest executive must do them with regularity. Second, create chunks of deliberately unstructured time for people and the inevitable stuff that comes up. Third, engage in meetings that matter, making particular use of carefully constructed standing meetings that can be the heartbeat of dialogue, debate, and decision; and use some of your think time to prepare and follow up.
#5: Prepare better meetings.
preparation with a clear purpose in mind (“why are we having this meeting?”) and disciplined follow-up.
#6: Don’t make a hundred decisions when one will do.
“inactivity can be very intelligent behavior”
#7: Find your one big distinctive impact.
#8: Stop what you would not start.
#9: Run lean.
Get better people, give them really big things to do, enlarge their responsibilities, and let them work.
#10: Be useful.
We are all given only one short life, composed of the same 168 hours a week as everyone else. What will it add up to? How will other people’s lives be changed? What difference will it make?
They asked, “What needs to be done?” • They asked, “What is right for the enterprise?” • They developed action plans. • They took responsibility for decisions. • They took responsibility for communicating. • They were focused on opportunities rather than problems. • They ran productive meetings. • They thought and said “we” rather than “I.”
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.
Listen first, speak last.
Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.
The greatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaningless data.
Unless he changes it by deliberate action, the flow of events will determine what he is concerned with and what he does.
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.
one has a responsibility to know at least what these areas are about, why they are around, and what they are trying to do.
If one cannot increase the supply of a resource, one must increase its yield.
1. Effective executives know where their time goes. They work systematically
2. Effective executives focus on outward contribution. They gear their efforts to results rather than to work.
3. Effective executives build on strengths—their
4. Effective executives concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results.
do first things first—and second things not at all.
recording time, • managing time, and • consolidating time is the foundation of executive effectiveness.
If one wants to get anything across, one has to spend a fairly large minimum quantum of time.
1. First one tries to identify and eliminate the things that need not be done at all, the things that are purely waste of time without any results whatever.
2. The next question is: “Which of the activities on my time log could be done by somebody else just as well, if not better?”
1. The first task here is to identify the time-wasters which follow from lack of system or foresight.
2. Time-wastes often result from overstaffing.
3. Another common time-waster is malorganization. Its symptom is an excess of meetings.
4. The last major time-waster is malfunction in information.
keep a continuing log and analyze it periodically.
set themselves deadlines for the important activities, based on their judgment of their discretionary time.
“What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?”
the man who focuses on contribution and who takes responsibility for results, no matter how junior, is in the most literal sense of the phrase, “top management.”
direct results; building of values and their reaffirmation; and building and developing people for tomorrow.
“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?”
immunity against the arrogance of the learned—that degenerative disease which destroys knowledge and deprives it of beauty and effectiveness.
requirements of effective human relations: • communications; • teamwork; • self-development; and • development of others.
He does not make staffing decisions to minimize weaknesses but to maximize strength.
Effective executives never ask “How does he get along with me?” Their question is “What does he contribute?” Their question is never “What can a man not do?” Their question is always “What can he do uncommonly well?”
Any job that has defeated two or three men in succession, even though each had performed well in his previous assignments, must be assumed unfit for human beings. It must be redesigned.
Only if the job is big and demanding to begin with, will it enable a man to rise to the new demands of a changed situation.
