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January 1 - August 23, 2025
Knowledge work requires both autonomy and accountability.
Management is what tradition used to call a liberal art—“liberal” because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge, self-knowledge, wisdom, and leadership; “art” because it deals with practice and application.
Above all management is responsible for producing results.
To know one’s strengths, to know how to improve them, and to know what one cannot do—are the keys to continuous learning.
Knowledge people must take responsibility for their own development and placement.
What matters is not charisma. What matters is whether the leader leads in the right direction or misleads.
One is organized abandonment of products, services, processes, markets, distribution channels, and so on that are no longer an optimal allocation of resources. Then any institution must organize for systematic, continuing improvement. Then it has to organize for systematic and continuous exploitation, especially of its successes. And finally, it has to organize systematic innovation,
Financial analysts believe that businesses can be run for both, simultaneously. Successful businessmen know better. To be sure, everyone has to produce short-term results.
Objectives are needed in every area where performance and results directly and vitally affect the survival and prosperity of the business. There are eight areas in which performance and objectives have to be set: market standing, innovation, productivity, physical and financial resources, profitability, manager performance and development, worker performance and attitude, and public responsibility.
Profit serves three purposes.
One is it measures the net effectiveness and soundness of a business’s efforts.
Another is the “risk premium” that covers the costs of staying in business—replacement, obsolescence,...
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Finally, profit ensures the supply of future capital for innovation and expansion, either directly, by providing the means of self-financing out of retained earnings, or indirectly, through providing sufficient inducement for new outside capital in the form in which it is best suited to the enterprise’s objectives.
knowledge rapidly deteriorates unless it is used constantly,
Management is about human beings.
The responsible worker has a personal commitment to getting results.
Responsibility, therefore, is both external and internal. Externally it implies accountability to some person or body and accountability for specific performance. Internally it implies commitment.
The focus of the organization must be on opportunities rather than on problems.
four simple things: a leader is someone who has followers; popularity is not leadership, results are; leaders are highly visible, they set examples; leadership is not rank, privilege, titles, or money, it is responsibility.
Effective leaders delegate, but they do not delegate the one thing that will set the standards. They do it.
A person should not be appointed if that person is more interested in the question “Who is right?” than in the question “What is right?”
Management should not appoint a person who considers intelligence more important than integrity.
It should never promote a person who has shown that he or she is afraid of strong subordinates.
It should never put into a management job a person who does not set high standards...
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Accept responsibility for placements that fail. Remove people who do not perform.
ACTION POINT: Make decisions on people your top priority. Spend more time on these decisions so that you will not have to “repent at leisure.”
Knowledge without skill is unproductive.
Do not continue to do in your new assignment what made you successful in the old one. When you enter a new assignment, ask “What new things should I be doing in my new assignment to be effective?”
The person with the most responsibility for an individual’s development is the person himself—not the boss. The first priority for one’s own development is to strive for excellence.
“The devil finds work for idle hands.”
Strive for perfection in your work knowing that it will always elude you.
ACTION POINT: Every month, prepare a page that lists opportunities, including areas where results were better than expected, whether in terms of sales, revenues, profits, or volume. Follow this with another page that lists the organization’s most capable people. Then allocate the best performers to the top opportunities. Management
The less diverse a business, the more manageable it is. Simplicity makes for clarity.
