The Effective Executive

by Peter F. Drucker

The most common cause of executive failure is inability or unwillingness to change with the demands of a new position. The executive who keeps on doing what he has done successfully before he moved is almost bound to fail.

“What can I and no one else do which, if done really well, would make a real difference to this company?” The one, truly significant contribution, he concluded, would be the development of tomorrow’s managers. The company had prided itself for many years on its executive development policies. “But,” the new chief executive argued, “a policy does nothing by itself. My contribution is to make sure that this actually gets done.”

The McNamara story shows that the higher the position an executive holds, the larger will the outside loom in his contribution. No one else in the organization can as a rule move as freely on the outside.

The task is not to breed generalists. It is to enable the specialist to make himself and his specialty effective. This means that he must think through who is to use his output and what the user needs to know and to understand to be able to make productive the fragment the specialist produces.

has to be understood by others before he can be effective.

If a man wants to be an executive—that is, if he wants to be considered responsible for his contribution—he has to concern himself with the usability of his “product”—that is, his knowledge.

“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?”

The scientist in government who focuses on contribution soon realizes that he must explain to the policy-maker where a scientific development might lead to; he must do something forbidden to scientists as a rule—that is, speculate about the outcome of a line of scientific inquiry.

The only meaningful definition of a “generalist” is a specialist who can relate his own small area to the universe of knowledge.

He may never himself be able to integrate a number of knowledge areas into one. But he soon realizes that he has to learn enough of the needs, the directions, the limitations, and the perceptions of others to enable them to use his own work.

The focus on contribution leads to communications sideways and thereby makes teamwork possible.

Individual self-development in large measure depends on the focus on contributions.

The man who asks of himself, “What is the most important contribution I can make to the performance of this organization?” asks in effect, “What self-development do I need? What knowledge and skill do I have to acquire to make the contribution I should be making? What strengths do I have to put to work? What standards do I have to set myself?”

The executive who focuses on contribution also stimulates others to develop themselves, whether they are subordi...

“Why are we having this meeting? Do we want a decision, do we want to inform, or do we want to make clear to ourselves what we should be doing?”

They insist that the meeting serve the contribution to which they have committed themselves.

the cardinal rule is to focus it from the start on contribution.

The effective executive fills positions and promotes on the basis of what a man can do. He does not make staffing decisions to minimize weaknesses but to maximize strength.

Whoever tries to place a man or staff an organization to avoid weakness will end up at best with mediocrity.

The executive who is concerned with what a man cannot do rather than with what he can do, and who therefore tries to avoid weakness rather than make strength effective is a weak man himself.

But no executive has ever suffered because his subordinates were strong and effective.

To look for one area of strength and to attempt to put it to work is dictated by the nature of man. In fact, all the talk of “the whole man” or the “mature personality” hides a profound contempt for man’s most specific gift: his ability to put all his resources behind one activity, one field of endeavor, one area of accomplishment. It is, in other words,

contempt for excellence. Human excellence can only be achieved in one area, or at the most in very few.

Unless, therefore, an executive looks for strength and works at making strength productive, he will only get the impact of what a man cannot do, of his lacks, his weaknesses, his impediments to performance and effectiveness.

To focus on strength is to make demands for performance.

The really “demanding boss”—and one way or another all makers of men are demanding bosses—always starts out with what a man should be able to do well—and then demands that he really do it.

But there is a subtler reason for insistence on impersonal, objective jobs. It is the only way to provide the organization with the human diversity it needs. It is the only way to tolerate —indeed to encourage—differences in temperament and personality in an organization.

Achievement must be measured against objective criteria of contribution and performance. This is possible, however, only if jobs are defined and structured impersonally.

forever on guard against the “impossible” job, the job that simply is not for normal human beings.

The effective executive therefore first makes sure that the job is well-designed.

he does not hunt for genius to do the impossible. He redesigns the job.

The second rule for staffing from strength is to make each job demanding and big. It should have challenge to bring out whatever strength a man may have. It should have scope so that any strength that is relevant to the task can produce significant results.

What is needed in knowledge work is not this or that particular skill, but a configuration, and this will be revealed only by the test of performance.

It is easy to move while young—

The young knowledge worker should, therefore, ask himself early: “Am I in the right work and in the right place for my strengths to tell?” But he cannot ask this question, let alone answer it, if the beginning job is too small, too easy, and designed to offset his lack of experience rather than to bring out what he can do.

The ones who are enthusiastic and who, in turn, have results to show for their work, are the ones whose abilities are being challenged and used.

Effective executives know that they have to start with what a man can do rather than with what a job requires. This, however, means that they do their thinking about people long before the decision on filling a job has to be made, and independently of it.

What we do need to know are the strengths of a man and what he can do.

Japanese executives always look for the man in the group who can do the job. They always look for strength.

we had better adopt the Japanese custom of looking for strength and using strength.

And even if the promise is there, it may well go unfulfilled, while people who have not shown such promise (if only because they may not have had the opportunity) actually produce the performance.

All one can measure is performance. And all one should measure is performance. This is another reason for making jobs big and challenging. It is also a reason for thinking through the contribution a man should make to the results and the performance of his organization. For one can measure the performance of a man only against specific performance expectations.

It starts out with a statement of the major contributions expected from a man in his past and present positions and a record of his performance against these goals.

The last question (ii) is the only one which is not primarily concerned with strengths.

There is, therefore, nothing more corrupting and more destructive in an organization than a forceful but basically corrupt executive.

Here, therefore, is the one area in which weakness in itself is of importance and relevance.

By themselves, character and integrity do not accomplish anything. But their absence faults everything else.

The effective executive knows that to get strength one has to put up with weaknesses.

The effective executive will therefore ask: “Does this man have strength in one major area? And is this strength relevant to the task? If he achieves excellence in this one area, will it make a significant difference?” And if the answer is “yes,” he will go ahead and appoint the man.

they search for strength and staff for excellence.