The Effective Executive

by Peter F. Drucker

Brilliant men are often strikingly ineffectual; they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not by itself achievement. 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.

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

Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.

They are occupied with efforts rather than with results.

And this is really wrong way to do things

Effective executives do not make a great many decisions. They concentrate on the important ones. They try to think through what is strategic and generic, rather than “solve problems.”

The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.