The Effective Executive

by Peter F. Drucker

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.

An organization which just perpetuates today’s level of vision, excellence, and accomplishment has lost the capacity to adapt. And since the one and only thing certain in human affairs is change, it will not be capable of survival in a changed tomorrow.

People adjust to the level of the demands made on them.

The new head had come up as a financial man and was at home with figures—the costing system, purchasing and inventory, the financing of new stores, traffic studies, and so on. People were by and large a shadowy abstraction to him. But when he suddenly found himself president, he asked himself: “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

The task is not to breed generalists. It is to enable the specialist to make himself and his specialty effective.

The man of knowledge has always been expected to take responsibility for being understood. It is barbarian arrogance to assume that the layman can or should make the effort to understand him, and that it is enough if the man of knowledge talks to a handful of fellow experts who are his peers.

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

Executives in an organization do not have good human relations because they have a “talent for people.” They have good human relations because they focus on contribution in their own work and in their relationships with others.

The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations: communications; teamwork; self-development; and development of others.

1. Communications have been in the center of managerial attention these last twenty years or more.

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

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

4. The executive who focuses on contribution also stimulates others to develop themselves, whether they are subordinates, colleagues, or superiors.

People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves.

Focusing on contribution turns one of the inherent weaknesses of the executive’s situation—his dependence on other people, his being within the organization—into a source of strength. It creates a team.

To focus on contribution is to focus on effectiveness.

The effective executive makes strength productive.

Lincoln learned this the hard way however. Before he chose Grant, he had appointed in succession three or four Generals whose main qualifications were their lack of major weaknesses. As a result, the North, despite its tremendous superiority in men and materiel, had not made any headway for three long years from 1861 to 1864. In sharp contrast, Lee, in command of the Confederate forces, had staffed from strength. Every one of Lee’s generals, from Stonewall Jackson on, was a man of obvious and monumental weaknesses. But these failings Lee considered—rightly—to be irrelevant. Each of them had, however, one area of real strength—and it was this strength, and only this strength, that Lee utilized and made effective. As a result, the “well-rounded” men Lincoln had appointed were beaten time and again by Lee’s “single-purpose tools,” the men of narrow but very great strength.

All true until Lincoln brought Grant east

Strong people always have strong weaknesses too. Where there are peaks, there are valleys.

There is no such thing as a “good man.” Good for what? is the question.

There is no prouder boast, but also no better prescription, for executive effectiveness than the words Andrew Carnegie, the father of the U.S. steel industry, chose for his own tombstone: “Here lies a man who knew how to bring into his service men better than he was himself.”

Another story about General Robert E. Lee illustrates the meaning of making strength productive. One of his generals, the story goes, had disregarded orders and had thereby completely upset Lee’s plans—and not for the first time either. Lee, who normally controlled his temper, blew up in a towering rage. When he had simmered down, one of his aides asked respectfully, “Why don’t you relieve him of his command?” Lee, it is said, turned around in complete amazement, looked at the aide, and said, “What an absurd question—he performs.”

Effective executives never ask “How does he get along with me?” Their question is “What does he contribute?” Their question is never “What can a man not do?” Their question is always “What can he do uncommonly well?” In staffing they look for excellence in one major area, and not for performance that gets by all around.

People with many interests do exist—and this is usually what we mean when we talk of a “universal genius.”

To focus on strength is to make demands for performance. The man who does not first ask, “What can a man do?” is bound to accept far less than the associate can really contribute. He excuses the associate’s nonperformance in advance. He is destructive but not critical, let alone realistic. 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.

Achievement must be measured against objective criteria of contribution and performance.

Lincoln, it has often been remarked, only became an effective chief executive after he had changed from close personal relations—for example, with Stanton, his Secretary of War —to aloofness and distance. Franklin D. Roosevelt had no “friend” in the Cabinet—not even Henry Morgenthau, his Secretary of the Treasury, and a close friend on all non-governmental matters. General Marshall and Alfred P. Sloan were similarly remote. These were all warm men, in need of close human relationships, endowed with the gift of making and keeping friends. They knew however that their friendships had to be “off the job.” They knew that whether they liked a man or approved of him was irrelevant, if not a distraction. And by staying aloof they were able to build teams of great diversity but also of strength.

How then do effective executives staff for strength without stumbling into the opposite trap of building jobs to suit personality? By and large they follow four rules:

1. They do not start out with the assumption that jobs are created by nature or by God.

2. The second rule for staffing from strength is to make each job demanding and big.

A carpenter’s or a machinist’s job is defined by the craft and varies little from one shop to another. But for the ability of a knowledge worker to contribute in an organization, the values and the goals of the organization are at least as important as his own professional knowledge and skills.

3. 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.

Appraisals, as they are now being used in the great majority of organizations, were designed originally by the clinical and abnormal psychologists for their own purposes. The clinician is a therapist trained to heal the sick. He is legitimately concerned with what is wrong, rather than with what is right with the patient. He assumes as a matter of course that nobody comes to him unless he is in trouble. The clinical psychologist or the abnormal psychologist, therefore, very properly looks upon appraisals as a process of diagnosing the weaknesses of a man.

For a superior to focus on weakness, as our appraisals require him to do, destroys the integrity of his relationship with his subordinates.

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?”

4. 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.

General Marshall during World War II insisted that a general officer be immediately relieved if found less than outstanding. To keep him in command, he reasoned, was incompatible with the responsibility the army and the nation owed the men under an officer’s command. Marshall flatly refused to listen to the argument: “But we have no replacement.” “All that matters,” he pointed out, “is that you know that this man is not equal to the task. Where his replacement comes from is the next question.”

But 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.”

This—one of the greatest educational feats in military history—was done by a man who lacked all the normal trappings of “leadership,” such as the personal magnetism or the towering self-confidence of a Montgomery, a de Gaulle or a MacArthur. What Marshall had were principles. “What can this man do?” was his constant question. And if a man could do something, his lacks became secondary. Marshall, for instance, again and again came to George Patton’s rescue and made sure that this ambitious, vain, but powerful wartime commander would not be penalized for the absence of the qualities that make a good staff officer and a successful career soldier in peacetime. Yet Marshall himself personally loathed the dashing beau sabreur of Patton’s type.

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.

He made but one exception: When President Roosevelt pleaded that Marshall was indispensable to him, Marshall stayed in Washington, yielded supreme command in Europe to Eisenhower, and thus gave up his life’s dream.

Finally Marshall knew—and everyone can learn it from him—that every people-decision is a gamble. By basing it on what a man can do, it becomes at least a rational gamble.

Around 1900, the only knowledge fields for all practical purposes were still the traditional professions—the law, medicine, teaching, and preaching. There are now literally hundreds of different disciplines.

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?”

This should be elementary prudence. Contrary to popular legend, subordinates do not, as a rule, rise to position and prominence over the prostrate bodies of incompetent bosses. If their boss is not promoted, they will tend to be bottled up behind him. And if their boss is relieved for incompetence or failure, the successor is rarely the bright, young man next in line. He usually is brought in from the outside and brings with him his own bright, young men. Conversely, there is nothing quite as conducive to success, as a successful and rapidly promoted superior.

All of us are “experts” on other people and see them much more clearly than they see themselves. To make the boss effective is therefore usually fairly easy. But it requires focus on his strengths and on what he can do. It requires building on strength to make weaknesses irrelevant. Few things make an executive as effective as building on the strengths of his superior.

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

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

Making strengths productive is equally important in respect to one’s own abilities and work habits.