The Effective Executive

by Peter F. Drucker

Systematic time management is therefore the next step. One has to find the nonproductive, time-wasting activities and get rid of them if one possibly can. This requires asking oneself a number of diagnostic questions.

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.

“What would happen if this were not done at all?” And if the answer is, “Nothing would happen,” then obviously th...

Actually, all one has to do is to learn to say “no” if an activity contributes nothing to one’s own organization, to oneself, or to the organization for which it is to be performed.

The next question is: “Which of the activities on my time log could be done by somebody else just as well, if not better?”

The first look at the time record makes it abundantly clear that there just is not time enough to do the things the executive himself considers important, himself wants to do, and is himself committed to doing. The only way he can get to the important things is by pushing on others anything that can be done by them at all.

A common cause of time-waste is largely under the executive’s control and can be eliminated by him. That is the time of others he himself wastes.

Effective executives have learned to ask systematically and without coyness: “What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness?”

The first task here is to identify the time-wasters which follow from lack of system or foresight.

The symptom to look for is the recurrent “crisis,”

A crisis that recurs a second time is a crisis that mus...

A recurrent crisis should always have been foreseen. It can therefore either be prevented or reduced to a routine which clerks can manage.

The definition of a “routine” is that it makes unskilled people without judgment capable of doing what it took near-genius to do before; for a routine puts down in systematic, step-by-step form what a very able man learned in surmounting yesterday’s crisis.

A well-managed plant, I soon learned, is a quiet place.

A well-managed factory is boring. Nothing

exciting happens in it because the crises

have been anticipated and have been converte...

Time-wastes often result from overstaffing.

There is a fairly reliable symptom of overstaffing. If the senior people in the group—and of course the manager in particular—spend more than a small fraction of their time, maybe one tenth, on “problems of human relations,” on feuds and frictions, on jurisdictional disputes and questions of cooperation, and so on, then the work force is almost certainly too large.

One should only

have on a team the knowledges and skills that are needed day in and day out for the bulk of the work. Specialists that may be needed once in a while, or that may have to be consulted on this or on that, should always remain outside.

Another common time-waster is malorganization. Its symptom is an excess of meetings.

But if executives in an organization spend more than a fairly small part of their time in meeting, it is a sure sign of malorganization.

But above all, meetings have to be the exception rather than the rule.

As a rule, meetings should never be allowed to become the main demand on an executive’s time.

Too many meetings signify that work that should be in one job or in one component is spread over several jobs or several components. They signify that responsibility is diffused and that information is not addressed to the people who need it.

The last major time-waster is malfunction in information.

Even worse, but equally common, is information in the wrong form.

Whenever I see a senior executive asserting that more than half his time is under his control and is really discretionary time which he invests and spends according to his own judgment, I am reasonably certain that he has no idea where his time goes.

While this might not be true for a startup founder, or perhaps it is, the startup founder who says they have too many things and no time might be equally ignorant of how they spend their time

The higher up an executive, the larger will be the proportion of time that is not under his control and yet not spent on contribution.

The larger the organization, the more time will be needed just to keep the organization together and running, rather than to make it function and produce.

A startup is doing nothing but figuring out how to run, so more time ought to be spent contributing than demanded of keeping things running, because there’s not much to keep running yet. On the opposite end of the spectrum then, the startup founder who is spending most of their time not contributing has no idea where their time is being spent.

The effective executive therefore knows that he has to consolidate his discretionary time. He knows that he needs large chunks of time and that small driblets are no time at all.

The final step in time management is therefore to consolidate the time that record and analysis show as normally available and under the executive’s control.

Another fairly common method is to schedule a daily work period at home in the morning.

But the method by which one consolidates one’s discretionary time is far less important than the approach.

Effective executives start out by estimating how much discretionary time they can realistically call their own. Then they set aside continuous time in the appropriate amount.

And if they find later that other matters encroach on this reserve, they scrutinize their record again and get rid of some more time demands from less than fully productive activities. They know that, as has been said before, one rarely overprunes.

And all effective executives control their time manag...

keep a continuing log and analyze it periodically. They set themselves deadlines for the important activities, based on their j...

The effective executive focuses on contribution. He looks up from his work and outward toward goals. He asks: “What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?” His stress is on responsibility.

The great majority of executives tend to focus downward.

As a result, they render themselves ineffectual.

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.”

To ask, “What can I contribute?” is to look for the unused potential in the job.

“Contribution,” as the two illustrations just given show, may mean different things. For every organization needs performance in three major areas: It needs direct results; building of values and their reaffirmation; and building and developing people for tomorrow. If deprived of performance in any one of these areas, it will decay and die. All three therefore have to be built into the contribution of every executive. But their relative importance varies greatly with the personality and the position of the executive as well as with the needs of the organization.

Direct results always come first.

But any organization also needs a commitment to values and their constant reaffirmation,

There has to be something “this organization stands for,”

An executive’s focus on contribution by itself is a powerful force in developing people. People adjust to the level of the demands made on them. The executive who sets his sights on contribution, raises the sights and standards of everyone with whom he works.

Commitment to contribution is commitment to responsible effectiveness.