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Effective executives are not blind to weakness. The executive who understands that it is his job to enable John Jones to do his tax accounting has no illusions about Jones’s ability to get along with people. He would never appoint Jones a manager.
And this is invariably the mediocrity.
“Is he the man most likely to do an outstanding job?”
One implication is that the men who build first-class executive teams are not usually close to their immediate colleagues and subordinates. Picking people for what they can do rather than on personal likes or dislikes, they seek performance, not conformance. To insure this outcome, they keep a distance between themselves and their close colleagues.
The rule is simple: Any job that has defeated two or three men in succession, even though each had performed well in his previous assignments, must be assumed unfit for human beings. It must be redesigned.
And despite Mr. McNamara’s lion-taming act at the Pentagon, I am not yet convinced that the job of Secretary of Defense of the United States is really possible (though I admit I cannot conceive of an alternative).
i dont understand why drucker is so enamiured oof mcnmara
no matter how much the Civil Service Commission tries to make all government departments observe the same rules and use the same yardsticks, government agencies, once they have been in existence for a few years, have a distinct personality. Each requires a different behavior from its staff members, especially from those in the professional grades, to be effective and to make a contribution.
amen
What we do need to know are the strengths of a man and what he can do. Your appraisals are not even interested in this.”
we had better adopt the Japanese custom of looking for strength and using strength.
Still one needs some form of appraisal procedure—or else one makes the personnel evaluation at the wrong time, that is when a job has to be filled. Effective executives, therefore, usually work out their own radically different form. 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. Then it asks four questions:
(a) “What has he [or she] done well?” (b) “What, therefore, is he likely to be able to do well?” (c) “What does he have to learn or to acquire to be able to get the full benefit from his strength?” (d) “If I had a son or daughter, would I be willing to have him or her work under this person?” (i) “If yes, why?” (ii) “If no, why?”
There is, therefore, nothing more corrupting and more destructive in an organization than a forceful but basically corrupt executive. Such
weakness in itself is of importance and relevance. By themselves, character and integrity do not accomplish anything. But their absence faults everything else.
Staffing the opportunities instead of the problems not only creates the most effective organization, it also creates enthusiasm and dedication.
That neither the Japanese “lifetime employment” nor the various civil service systems of the West consider proven incompetence ground for removal is a serious weakness—and
Marshall also insisted that to relieve a man from command was less a judgment on the man than on the commander who had appointed him. “The only thing we know is that this spot was the wrong one for the man,” he argued. “This does not mean that he is not the ideal man for some other job. Appointing him was my mistake, now it’s up to me to find what he can do.”
“What can this man do?” was his constant question. And if a man could do something, his lacks became secondary.
Marshall was only concerned with weaknesses when they limited the full development of a man’s strength. These he tried to overcome through work and career opportunities.
sounds like MG Bassham and Louis
Marshall always appointed the best qualified man no matter how badly he was needed where he was. “We owe this move to the job . . . we owe it to the man and we owe it to the troops,” was his reply when someone—usually someone high up—pleaded with him not to pull out an “indispensable” man.
A superior has responsibility for the work of others. He also has power over the careers of others. Making strengths productive is therefore much more than an essential of effectiveness. It is a moral imperative, a responsibility of authority and position. To focus on weakness is not only foolish; it is irresponsible.
How Do I Manage My Boss? Above all, the effective executive tries to make fully productive the strengths of his own superior. I have yet to find a manager, whether in business, in government, or in any other institution, who did not say: “I have no great trouble managing my subordinates. But how do I manage my boss?” It is actually remarkably easy—but only effective executives know that. The secret is that effective executives make the strengths of the boss productive.
ii ask myself this question everyday...
One does not make the strengths of the boss productive by toadying to him. One does it by starting out with what is right and presenting it in a form which is accessible to the superior.
Few things make an executive as effective as building on the strengths of his superior.
what are the concrete ones and hoow do i go about this?
Effective executives are of course also concerned with limitations. But it is amazing how many things they find that can be done
the effective executives go ahead and do. As a result, the limitations that weigh so heavily on their brethren often melt away.
The assertion that “somebody else will not let me do anything” should always be suspected as a cover-up for inertia.
It is not very difficult to know how we achieve results. By the time one has reached adulthood, one has a pretty good idea as to whether one works better in the morning or at night. One usually knows whether one writes best by making a great many drafts fast, or by working meticulously on every sentence until it is right. One knows whether one speaks well in public from a prepared text, from notes, without any prop, or not at all. One knows whether one works well as a member of a committee or better alone—or whether one is altogether unproductive as a committee member.
Some people work best if they have a detailed outline in front of them; that is, if they have thought through the job before they start it. Others work best with nothing more than a few rough notes. Some work best under pressure. Others work better if they have a good deal of time and can finish the job long before the deadline. Some are “readers,” others “listeners.” All this one knows, about oneself—just as one knows whether one is right-handed or left-handed.
temperament is also a factor in accomplishment and a big one.
“investments in managerial ego” and sacred. *
It is always the most capable people who are wasted in the futile attempt to obtain for the investment in managerial ego the “success it deserves.”
for all government agencies and their programs, adapting the “program review” which Secretary McNamara had developed to rid the Defense department of the barnacles of obsolete and unproductive work. This is a good first step, and badly needed. But it will not produce results as long as we maintain the traditional assumption that all programs last forever unless proven to have outlived their usefulness. The assumption should rather be that all programs outlive their usefulness fast and should be scrapped unless proven productive and necessary. Otherwise, modern government, while increasingly
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“Is this still worth doing?”
The only effective means for bailing out the new are people who have proven their capacity to perform. Such people are always already busier than they should be. Unless one relieves one of them of his present burden, one cannot expect him to take on the new task.
one starts something new with people of tested and proven strength, that is, with veterans.
new. There is no lack of ideas in any organization I know. “Creativity” is not our problem. But few organizations ever get going on their own good ideas. Everybody is much too busy on the tasks of yesterday. 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 even in the most hidebound bureaucracy.
conversion of decision into action.
They always favor what has happened over the future, the crisis over the opportunity, the immediate and visible over the real, and the urgent over the relevant.
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.
this is an intrwsting way to look at iit
timing is a most important element in the success of any effort.
There is no guarantee that the policy area a politician or an administrator has decided to slight may not explode into
iaws
A great deal could be said about the analysis of priorities. The most important thing about priorities and posteriorities is, however, not intelligent analysis but courage.
Courage rather than analysis dictates the truly important rules for identifying priorities: Pick the future as against the past; Focus on opportunity rather than on problem; Choose your own direction—rather than climb on the bandwagon; and Aim high, aim for something that will make a difference, rather than for something that is “safe” and easy to do.
Similarly, in business the successful companies are not those that work at developing new products for their existing line but those that aim at innovating new technologies or new businesses.
ipod anyone?
Concentration—that is, the courage to impose on time and events his own decision as to what really matters and comes first—is the executive’s only hope of becoming the master of time and events instead of their whipping boy.
They want impact rather than technique, they want to be sound rather than clever.
Effective executives know when a decision has to be based on principle and when it should be made on the merits of the case and pragmatically.
Unless a decision has “degenerated into work” it is not a decision; it is at best a good intention.
this is hilarious
deliberately designed to make the present obsolete, no matter how profitable and efficient.
period, this was a breath-taking innovation in industry. Even today few businessmen understand that research, to be productive, has to be the “disorganizer,” the creator of a different future and the enemy of today. In most industrial laboratories, “defensive research” aimed at perpetuating today, predominates. But from the very beginning, the Bell Labs shunned defensive research.
