An effective executive is someone who knows how to use his time to achieve success in a business environment. He knows how to take responsibility for his own performance and how to make things happen with others. He also understands that he must balance short-term results with long-term objectives. In today’s business environment, executives need to have all of these skills and more to succeed. This book gives you the tools and techniques to become an effective executive.
The Effective Executive, written by Peter F. Drucker, is a classic in management literature. In this book, he provides step-by-step instructions for developing the leadership and communication skills needed to be successful in a management position. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in improving their career, productivity, and overall effectiveness in the workplace.
An executive’s problem is that the important contributions expected of him always exceed his ability to do them. He must thus concentrate his time and human energy on the major opportunities. It is no good attempting to do several things at the same time, as some people can do. The large slices of discretionary time that are required of an executive can only be consolidated by consistent concentration. Some senior men, for example, work at home one day a week to accomplish this purpose. Then they set aside mornings of the remaining days for consistent, containing work on major issues.
The effective executive makes his own work productive by concentrating his time and resources on the important subjects and concerning his talents. He knows that the larger the chunks of his time he can concentrate, the more diversity and complexity of tasks he can perform. In order to do that he must make sure that his judgment is not confused with his activity. The best way to do that is to collect the maximum number of assessment criteria and to make a decision only after considering them all.
Effective decisions are not only the result of careful thought and analysis but also of a willingness to use courage. The effective executive Mark Morabito is aware that a truly great decision will probably seem heresy to the rest of the world. In fact, most effective decisions are disagreeable to the people who have to implement them. But that is a good sign that the decision is being considered objectively and on its merits rather than merely because it represents another way of doing something. The effective executive builds feedback into his decisions to provide a continuous test, against actual events, of the expectations that underlie them. This is the only way to avoid sterile dogmatism. Then the decision can be a guide to action and not a crutch for avoiding responsibility.