The Effective Executive

by Peter F. Drucker

This also implies that they focus on opportunity in their staffing—not on problems.

decided to move automatically anyone whose boss described him as indispensable. “This either means,” he said, “that I have a weak superior or a weak subordinate—or both.

The man of proven performance has earned the opportunity. Staffing the opportunities instead of the problems not only creates the most effective organization, it also creates enthusiasm and dedication.

Conversely, it is the duty of the executive to remove ruthlessly anyone—and especially any manager—who consistently fails to perform with high distinction.

“What can this man do?” was his constant question. And if a man could do something, his lacks became secondary.

only concerned with weaknesses when they limited the full development of a man’s strength.

Marshall always appointed the best qualified man no matter how badly he was needed where he was.

Organization must serve the individual to achieve through his strengths and regardless of his limitations and weaknesses.

One need no longer, as one had to do even in the recent past, fit oneself to the available knowledge areas and employments. On the other hand, it is increasingly difficult for a young man to make his choice. He does not have enough information, either about himself or about the opportunities. This makes it much more important for the individual that he be directed toward making his strengths productive.

It also makes it important for the organization that its

executives focus on strengths and work on making strengths productive in their own group and ...

The secret is that effective executives make the strengths of the boss productive.

This seems the secret generally—make your and their strengths productive. Do that, and management is simple and business will become effective.

The effective executive, therefore, asks: “What can my boss do really well?” “What has he done really well?” “What does he need to know to use his strength?” “What does he need to get from me to perform?”

The one question and decision to make relationships in Business and life effective when cooperation is key.

Effective executives lead from strength in their own work. They make productive what they can do.

Effective executives are of course also concerned with limitations. But it is amazing how many things they find that can be done

and are worth while doing. While the others complain about their inability to do anything, the effective executives go ahead and do.

First thing, lead with action and focus on what you can do. Second thing, recognize limitations and restrictions but don’t focus on eliminating these. Merely make sure they don’t cripple what you can do effectively.

The assertion that “somebody else will not let me do anything” should always be suspected as a cover-up for inertia.

there are usually important, meaningful, pertinent things that

can be done. The effective executive looks for them.

If he starts out with the question: “What can I do?” he is almost certain to find that he can actually do much more t...

All in all, the effective executive tries to be himself; he does not pretend to be someone else.

He looks at his own performance and at his own results and tries to discern a pattern. “What are the things,” he asks, “that I seem to be able to do with relative ease, while they come rather hard to other people?”

One part of your hedgehog, as Jim Collins described

To be effective he builds on what he knows he can do and does it the way he has found out he works best.

making strength productive is as much an attitude as it is a practice.

In every area of effectiveness within an organization, one feeds the opportunities and starves the problems. Nowhere is this more important than in respect to people. The effective executive looks upon people including himself as an opportunity.

the distance between the leaders and the average is a constant. If leadership performance is high, the average will go up. The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one leader than it is to raise the performance of a whole mass. He therefore makes sure that he puts into the leadership position, into the standard-setting, the performance-making position, the man who has the strength to do the outstanding, the pace-setting job.

If there is any one “secret” of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.

the way to apply productively mankind’s great range is to bring to bear a large number of individual capabilities on one task.

Concentration is necessary precisely because the executive faces so many tasks clamoring to be done. For doing one thing at a time means doing it fast. The more one can concentrate time, effort, and resources, the greater the number and diversity of tasks one can actually perform.

This is the “secret” of those people who “do so many things” and apparently so many difficult things. They do only one at a time. As a result, they need much less time in the end than the rest of us.

The people who get nothing done often work a great deal harder. In the first place, they underestimate the time for any one

task. They always expect that everything will go right. Yet, as every executive knows, nothing ever goes right. The unexpected always happens—the unexpected is indeed the only thing one can confidently expect. And almost never is it a pleasant surprise. Effective executives therefore allow a fair margin of time beyond what is actually needed. In the second place, the typical (that is, the more or less ineffectual) executive tries to hurry—and that only puts him further behind. Effective executives do not race. They set an easy pace but keep going steadily. Finally, the typical executive tries to do several things at once. Therefore, he never has the minimum time quantum for any of the tasks in his program. If any one of them runs into trouble, his entire program collapses.

they concentrate—their own time and energy as well as that of their organization—on doing one thing at a time, and on doing first things first.

The first rule for the concentration of executive efforts is to slough off the past that has ceased to be productive. Effective executives periodically review their work programs—and those of their associates—and ask: “If we did not already do this, would we go into it now?” And unless the answer is an unconditional “Yes,” they drop the activity or curtail it sharply. At the least, they make sure that no more resources are being invested in the no-longer-productive past. And those first-class resources, especially those scarce resources of human strength which are engaged in these tasks of yesterday, are immediately pulled out and put to work on the opportunities of tomorrow.

The assumption should rather be that all programs outlive their usefulness fast and should be scrapped unless proven productive and necessary.

He always asks: “Is this still worth doing?” And if it isn’t, he gets rid of it so as to be able to concentrate on the few tasks that, if done with excellence, will really make a difference in the results of his own job and in the performance of his organization.

the effective executive will slough off an old activity before he starts on a new one.

Every new task is such a gamble—even if other people have done the same job many times before—that an experienced and effective executive will not, if humanly possible, add to it the additional gamble of hiring an outsider to take charge.

Putting all programs and activities regularly on trial for their lives and getting rid of those that cannot prove their productivity work wonders in stimulating creativity

A decision therefore has to be made as to which tasks deserve priority and which are of less importance.

If the pressures rather than the executive are allowed to make the decision, the important tasks will predictably be sacrificed.

the most time-consuming part of any task, the conversion of decision into action.

no task is completed unless other people have taken it on as their own, have accepted new ways of doing old things or the necessity for doing something new, and have otherwise made the executive’s “completed” project their own daily routine.

Another predictable result of leaving control of priorities to the pressures is that the work of top management does not get done at all. That is always postponable work, for it does not try to solve yesterday’s crises but to make a different tomorrow. And the pressures always favor yesterday.

The reason why so few executives concentrate is the difficulty of setting “posteriorities”—that is, deciding what tasks not to tackle—and of sticking to the decision.

Most executives have learned that what one postpones, one actually abandons.

To do five years later what it would have been smart to do five years earlier is almost a sure recipe for frustration and failure.

It is much easier to draw up a nice list of top priorities and then to hedge by trying to do “just a little bit” of everything else as well.

The only drawback is, of course, that nothing whatever gets done.

The most important thing about priorities and posteriorities is, however, not intelligent analysis but courage.