The Effective Executive

I feel a bit lately that my blog is just one big book report. I am, however, 15 books behind in reviewing. So here is another one.

One of my favorite authors is Peter F. Drucker. I recently re-read his book, "The Effective Executive – The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done" (this plays perfectly into my theme of time leadership. Leadership is the working on the right things versus Management which is doing things right.) Effectiveness is more important than efficiency.

According to Peter Drucker, effective executives follow the same eight practices:

They asked, "What needs to be done?"
They asked, "What is right for the enterpise?"
They developed action plans.
They took responsibility for decisions.
They took responsibility for communicating.
They were focused on opportunities rather than problems
They ran productive meetings.
They thought and said "we" rather than “I”.

I particularly liked his view on taking responsibility for decisions.

"A decision has not been made until people know:

The name of the person accountble for carrying it out;
The deadline; the names of the people who will be affected by the decision and therefore have to know about, understand, and approve it – or at least not be strongly opposed to it; The names of the people who have to be informed of the decision, even if they are not directly affected by it."

"Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results. By themselves, they only set limits to what can be attained."

I could continue regurgitating and typing most of the book; however, I think it is such an excellent book that you should read it yourself.

Because I have been swamped lately, I resonated with one of his comments which was executives' time tend to belong to everybody else. Of course I blog about time management so part of time management is to figure out how to get control of time even though according to Drucker, the time actually belongs to everyone else.

Today is a Toronto day so best get on the road before the traffic.