The Effective Executive

Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs of organization. It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the executive and as his access to achievement and performance.

To be effective, every knowledge worker, and especially every executive, therefore needs to be able to dispose of time in fairly large chunks. To have small dribs and drabs of time at his disposal will not be sufficient even if the total is an impressive number of hours.

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?”

He must take responsibility for his contribution. And he is supposed, by virtue of his knowledge, to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyone else.

They know that they have no choice but to do first things first—and second things not at all. The alternative is to get nothing done.

The surface goes up with the square of the radius,

The larger the animal becomes, the more resources have to be devoted to the mass and to the internal tasks, to circulation and information, to the nervous system, and so on.

The man who focuses on efforts and who stresses his downward authority is a subordinate no matter how exalted his title and rank.

In a business, there can be attempts to mold the customers’ preferences and values through promotion and advertising.