The Effective Executive

1. Effective executives know where their time goes. They work systematically at managing the little of their time that can be brought under their control.

What is needed are few, but fundamental, decisions. What is needed is the right strategy rather than razzle-dazzle tactics.

THE EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE FOCUSES ON contribution. He looks up from his work and outward toward goals. He asks: “What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?” His stress is on responsibility.

This means that he has to set aside time to direct his vision from his work to results, and from his specialty to the outside in which alone performance lies.

The surface goes up with the square of the radius,

Unless the executive can reach these people, can make his contribution effective for them

The knowledge worker is the one “factor of production” through which the highly developed societies and economies of today—the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and also increasingly, the Soviet Union—become and remain competitive.

Unless a decision has “degenerated into work” it is not a decision; it is at best a good intention.

Even the largest organization is unreal compared to the reality of the environment in which it exists. Specifically, there are no results within the organization. All the results are on the outside. The only business results, for instance, are produced by a customer who converts the costs and efforts of the business into revenues and profits throug