The Effective Executive

by Peter F. Drucker

They never have learned that insights become effectiveness only through hard systematic work.

Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results.

For manual work, we need only efficiency; that is, the ability to do things right rather than the ability

to get the right things done.

knowledge worker,

are effective insofar as they can make a contribution to the organization.

There are few things less pleasing to the Lord, and less productive, than an engineering department that rapidly turns out beautiful blueprints for the wrong product. Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.

The greatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaningless data.

He cannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does a well-made pair of shoes.

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,

He must take responsibility for his contribution. And he is supposed, by virtue of his knowledge, to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyone else.

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.

have called “executives” those knowledge workers, managers, or individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their position or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course of their work that have significant impact on the performance and results of the whole.

unless executives work at becoming effective, the realities of their situation will push them into futility.

Executives are forced to keep on “operating” unless they take positive action to change the reality in which they live and work.

The fundamental problem is the reality around the executive. Unless he changes it by deliberate action, the flow of events will determine what he is concerned with and what he does.

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously, he will fritter himself away “operating.” He may be an excellent man. But he is certain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away what little effectiveness he might have achieved.

What the executive needs are criteria which enable him to work on the truly important,

that is, on contributions a...

even though the criteria are not found in the...

he is effective only if and when other people make use of what he contributes.

Each has to be able to use what the other produces.

Unless the executive can reach these people, can make his contribution effective for them and in their work, he has no effectiveness at all.

Unless he makes special efforts to gain direct access to outside reality, he will become increasingly inside-focused. The higher up in the organization he goes, the more will his attention be drawn to problems and challenges of the inside rather than to events on the outside.

Distraction--urgent but not important

An organization is an organ of society and fulfills itself by the

contribution it makes to the outside environment.

The truly important events on the outside are not the trends. They are changes in the trends.

Look for the changes—or rather ask what would have to be true to change the trend, and then make a bet

Such changes, however, have to be perceived; they cannot be counted, defined, or classified.

Man, however, while not particularly logical is perceptive—and that is his strength.

The computer only makes visible a condition that existed before it. Executives of necessity live and work within an organization. Unless they make conscious efforts to perceive the outside, the inside may blind them to the true reality.

We will therefore have to staff our organizations with people who at best excel in one of these abilities. And then they are more than likely to lack any but the most modest endowment in the others. We will have to learn to build organizations in such a manner that any man who has strength in one important area is capable of putting it to work

one has a responsibility to know at least what these areas are about, why they are around, and what they are trying to do.

What all these effective executives have in common is the practices that make effective whatever they have and whatever they are.

Take stock of who you are and what you have, then figure out how to best utilize it to be effective

Effectiveness, in other words, is a habit; that is, a complex of practices. And practices can always be learned.

that even the great pianists could not play Mozart as they do unless they practiced their scales and kept on practicing them.

There is, in other words, no reason why anyone with normal endowment should not acquire competence in any practice.

But what is needed in effectiveness is competence. What is need...

five such habits of the mind that have to be acquired to be an effective executive:

Effective executives know where their time goes.

Effective executives focus on outward contribution.

Why and how before the what

They start out with the question, “What results are expected of me?”

Effective executives build on strengths—their own strengths, the strengths of their superiors, colleagues, and subordinates; and on the strengths in the situation, that is, on what they can do.

Effective executives concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results. They force themselves to set priorities and stay with their priority decisions. They know that they have no choice but to do first things first—and second things not at all. The alternative is to get nothing done.

Effective executives, finally, make effective decisions.

What is needed are few, but fundamental, decisions.

The output limits of any process are set by the scarcest resource. In the process we call “accomplishment,” this is time.

Time is also a unique resource.

But one cannot rent, hire, buy, or otherwise obtain more time.

Everything requires time. It is the one truly universal condition. All work takes place in time and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable, and necessary resource.