The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Harperbusiness Essentials)

Effectiveness, in other words, is a habit; that is, a complex of practices. And practices can always be learned. Practices are simple, deceptively so; even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in understanding a practice. But practices are always exceedingly hard to do well. They have to be acquired, as we all learn the multiplication table; that is,

2. Effective executives focus on outward contribution. They gear their efforts to results rather than to work. They start out with the question, “What results are expected of me?”

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously, he will fritter himself away “operating.” He may be an excellent man. But he is certain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away what little effectiveness he might have achieved. What the executive needs are criteria which ena

The manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantity and quality of a definable and discrete output, such as a pair of shoes.

3. A common cause of time-waste is largely under the executive’s control and can be eliminated by him. That is the time of others he himself wastes.

the executive is, first of all, expected to get the right things done.

Such a man (or woman) must make decisions; he cannot just carry out orders.

“Delegation” as the term is customarily used, is a misunderstanding—is indeed misdirection. But getting rid of anything that can be done by somebody else so that one does not have to delegate but can really get to one’s own work—that is a major improvement in effectiveness.

People-decisions are time-consuming, for the simple reason that the Lord did not create people as “resources” for organization.

4. Finally, the executive is within an organization.