It took a long time than I expected to finish reading the book. The book is not very entertaining since it focuses on Management theories, however I cannot deny the fact that it is a fabulous book if anyone wants to focus on becoming an effective executive. The contemporary times require knowledge workers and it no longer is based on the manual worker(e.g.:- machine operator) based industry. What's more, being a knowledge worker is not even enough to be truly successful; It requires one to be effective and these effective knowledge workers are the effective executives every company is in search for.
So how does one become effective?
The first factor to focus on is that 'Effectiveness can be Learned'. Surprising, isn't it? Yet it is the reality. No matter which organization they work in, the job of an effective executive is to get the right things done and not the other way around. It's the responsibility of the manual worker to do things right. That is why the effective executives are important to every organization.
The next important question; Who is an Executive?
According to Drucker, every knowledge worker in modern organization is an “executive” if, by virtue of his position or knowledge, he is responsible for a contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organization to perform and to obtain results. What this simply means is that an executive has to contribute to the organizational growth through the power of his decisions.This may be the capacity of a business to bring out a new product or to obtain a larger share of a given market. It may be the capacity of a hospital to provide bedside care to its patients, and so on. Such a person must make decisions; he is not there just to carry out orders. 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. There are Managers who does not belong to this 'executive' category simply because what they actually do is manage a large worker base and carry out higher level orders. It shows that being a Manager cannot just make you an 'Executive'. For that, they have to have the responsibility for, and the authority over, the direction, the content, and the quality
of the work or the methods of its performance.
In addition, whether a knowledge worker is an executive does not depend on the fact whether he manages people or not.
Knowledge work is not defined by quantity or by its costs as well. Knowledge work is actually defined by its results. And for these, the size of the group and the magnitude of the managerial job are not even symptoms.
There are 4 factors which push executives into ineffectiveness in reality though. So it would be better to explain them before going on to explain how to be effective properly. Those ineffectiveness factors are,
1. The executive’s time tends to belong to everybody else.
A doctor can tell his nurse, that he won't be seeing any patients for the next hour. However, such a behavior cannot be expected from an executive. When his service is needed he has to be then and there no matter what.
Foe example, just at this moment, the executive’s telephone rings, and he has to speak to the company’s best customer or to a high official in the city administration or to his boss-and the next half hour is time is already gone for him.
2. Executives are forced to keep on “operating” unless they take positive action to change the reality in which they live and work.
The executive should not let the flow of events happening around him to determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously. If this happens, he will waste himself away by just “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 enable him to work on the truly important matters, that is, on contributions and results. This criteria may not often be found in the flow of events but has to be discovered by one's own ability.
3. The third reality pushing the executive toward ineffectiveness is that he is within an organization.
What this means is that one is effective only if and when other people make use of what one contributes. Usually the people who are most important to the effectiveness of an executive are not people over whom the Executive has direct control; Mostly they happen to be people in other areas. Or they are his superiors. Unless the executive can reach these people and can make his contribution effective for them and in their work, he has no effectiveness at all.
4. Finally, the executive is within an organization.
Every executive, regardless of what his organization is, sees the inside, that means the organization-as close and immediate reality. He rarely gets to see the real outside picture. Even if he gets to see it, it would most often be through an organizational filter of reports which would only present some abstract factors.
So, specifically what one needs to understand is that, there are no results within the organization. All the results are actually on the outside. For example, the only business results, are produced by the customer who reside outside the organization. These customers are the people responsible for converting the costs and efforts of the business into revenues and profits by buying the products or services of the business. The customer may decide to buy the product/service considering his own reasons. It could be on the basis of market considerations of supply and demand, or some other reason for that matter. No matter how he does it, the reality is that the decision-maker is outside rather than inside the business.
These 4 above conditions, an Executive has to face and cannot change. So what is the solution? It's simple; He has to learn to be effective.
But how can this happen? Drucker suggests 5 practices for executives to know in order to be effective.
1. Effective executives know where their time goes.
Time is the invaluable factor in any kind of matter. You can have money, but you can never have time as much as you want. Effective executives know this by experience. As a solution, they do not start with their tasks. What they start with is how much time they have. A good practice is to keep a time log/ schedule. Moreover, they do not start out with planning. They start by finding out where their time actually goes.
Then they attempt to manage their time and to cut back unproductive demands on their time. For example, rather than accepting and attending all business dinners, they could easily find a replacement, such as a Senior Manager. 3 such time wasters can be mentioned as, over staffing, malorganization and malfunction in information;Too much staff always creates unnecessary problems, Badly organized events such as unnecessary meetings waste your time and others' time as well, The badly delivered information also have the same bad effect on time.
Finally they consolidate their time into the largest possible continuing units. One might wonder why the time should be in large, uninterrupted chunks. Well, the reason is that it increases the effectiveness in whatever the task you have to do whether it's writing a report or making a decision. It would make you more focused on the matter.
So this actually is a simple 3-step process:
- recording time,
- managing time, and
- consolidating time
Results are the main focus of an effective executive, rather than the work load. They will start out with the question, “What results are expected of me?” and “What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve? rather than with the work to be done since he focuses on responsibility.
This focus on contribution turns the executive’s attention away from the narrow scope of viewing things to focusing on the performance of the whole. It actually turns his attention to the outside, the place where the actual results are produced.
However, the task is not to breed generalists but rather to enable the specialist to make himself and his specialty effective. For this, the specialist must think through who is to use his output and what the user
needs to know and to understand to make use of the product;This is the contribution he makes.
In addition, effective executives are almost imperceptibly led by their upward orientation into finding out what the other fellow needs, what the other fellow sees, and what the other fellow understands to make them effective as well. Simply put, they focus on “What contribution from me do you require to make your contribution to the organization? When do you need this, how do you need it, and in what form?”
Also effective executives keep good human relations.This is due to the fact that they focus on contribution in their own work and in their relationships with others. For this they have to have good communications, team work, self-development and the development of others.
Finally, they insist that their meetings are effective as well. The effective executive does not want to have a meeting unless it contributes to the development of others too.
3. Effective executives build on strengths-their own strengths, the strengths of their superiors, colleagues, and subordinates; and on the strengths in the situation, that is, on what they can do.
Staffing is one area the executive has to excel in order to be effective. For this, they fill positions and promotes on the basis of what a man can do.Their question is never “What can a man not do?” Their question is always “What can he do uncommonly well?”.
The effective executive always tends to find ways where he can minimize the weaknesses of his employee so that the strengths of the employee can be effectively used. One solution is to structure the organization well to make the strength relevant. Foe example, a good tax accountant in private practice might be troubled by his inability to get along with people. But in an organization such a man can be set up in an office of his own and shielded from direct contact with other people, so his strengths are effective and weakness irrelevant.
However, the executive must never fall into the trap of designing jobs to suit personalities. How can he achieve this?
Drucker points out 4 ways how the effective executive overcomes this issue.
1. First of all, they do not start out with the assumption that jobs are created by nature or by God but highly fallible men. And they are therefore forever on guard against the “impossible” job. If 2 or 3 successors leave the job in a short period of time, then they know that it's time to redesign the job.
2. The second rule for staffing from strength is to make each job demanding and big. It should have challenge to bring out whatever strength a man may have. It should have scope so that any strength that is relevant to the task can produce significant results. Else the employee will soon be tired out with the job which does not let him try out something to match his strength.
3. Thirdly, effective executives know that they have to start with what a man can do rather than with what a job requires. This, however, means that they do their thinking about people long before the decision on filling a job has to be made, and independently of it. To achieve the best results, they would use appraisals to evaluate the employee. This is highly effective when providing promotions.
E.g.:-
(a) “What has he [or she] done well?”
(b) “What, therefore, is he likely to be able to do well?”
(c) “What does he have to learn or to acquire to be able to
get the full benefit from his strength?”
(d) “If I had a son or daughter, would I be willing to have
him or her work under this person?”
(i) “If yes, why?”
(ii) “If no, why?”
4. Finally, the effective executive knows that to get strength one has to put up with weaknesses. So they will ask: “Does this man have strength in one major area? And is this strength relevant to the task? If he achieves excellence in this one area, will it make a significant difference?” And if the answer is “yes,” he will go ahead and appoint the man.
But that's not all. The effective executive will focus on the strengths and weaknesses of his Boss as well. He knows that the boss, being human, has his own ways of being effective. So he will focus on the strengths of the Boss and make them productive.
Effective executives are of course also concerned with limitations. While the others complain about their inability to do anything, the effective executives go ahead and do them.
Last but not least, the effective executive tries to be himself; For example, a person might find it easy to write up the final report. At the same time, he might find it rather difficult to think through the report and face up to the hard decisions. So he is, in other words, more effective as a staff thinker who organizes and lays out the problems than as the decision-maker who takes command responsibility.
4. Effective executives concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results.
They always force themselves to set priorities and stay with their priority decisions. 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.For this they need courage and concentration. As much as the effective executive does first things first, he will always do one thing at a time as well.
If you underestimate the time for any one task then you will have to work more harder and get nothing constructive out of it too. The effective executive always expects the unexpected and knows that most of them won't pleasant if unprepared. Therefore they allow a fair margin of time beyond what is actually needed when they concentrate on any task.
Effective executives periodically review their work programs and those of their associates and ask: “If we did not already do this, would we go into it now?” And unless the answer is an unconditional “Yes,” they drop the activity or restrict it sharply. This way, they can concentrate on the more important tasks and not waste resources on something unproductive.
The executive who wants himself and his organization to be effective, always asks: “Is this still worth doing?” And if it isn't, he gets rid of that program or activity so as to be able to concentrate on the few tasks that, if
done with excellence, will really make a difference in the results of his own job and in the performance of his organization. However, it should be done in a systematic way, so as not to make any major impact on other processes.
An effective executive should always decide on which tasks deserve priority and which are of less importance. However this decision should not be impacted by any external pressures.A predictable result of leaving control of priorities to the pressures is that the work of top management does not get done at all.
So always,
- Pick the future as against the past;
- Focus on opportunity rather than on problem;
- Choose your own direction
- Aim high, aim for something that will make a difference rather than for something that is “safe” and easy to do.
Only executives make decisions. It's their specific task. And they make decisions that have significant impact on the entire organization, its performance, and results. That's called effectiveness.However, effective executives do not make a great many decisions. They only concentrate on the important ones. For this, they try to think through what is strategic and generic, rather than “solve problems.” Frankly, they want impact rather than technique, they want to be sound rather than clever.
By experience, they know that the trickiest decision is that between the right and the wrong compromise and have learned to tell one from the other. And also,they know that the most time-consuming step in the process is not making the decision but putting it into effect.
A decision is actually a judgment. It is a choice between alternatives and is rarely a choice between right and wrong. Mostly, it is a choice between “almost right” and “probably wrong”.
Another thing which executives who make effective decisions know is that one does not start with facts. One starts with opinions.These opinions are nothing but untested hypotheses and, as such, would be worthless unless tested against reality.
One should never make decisions based on the "average" of facts. The reality always differs from the "average"and every effective executive knows this. The best way to overcome this is to go and look for the appropriate measurements. For example, the average amount of accidents in the organization would not show that the most amount of these accidents happen in one or two places.
Whenever one has to judge, one must have alternatives among which one can choose. Alternatives and disagreements would always lead to effective decisions. Only if there are alternatives can one hope to get insight into what is truly at stake.In addition, the effective decision-maker does not start out with the assumption that one proposed course of action is right and that all others must be wrong. Also he does not start out with the assumption, “I am right and he is wrong.” He starts out with the commitment to find out why people disagree.
There is one final question the effective decision-maker asks and that is, “Is a decision really necessary?” One alternative is always the alternative of doing nothing.
- Act if on balance the benefits greatly outweigh cost and risk; and
- Act or do not act; but do not “hedge” or compromise
One important factor which aids decision making nowadays is the computer. Actually the computer will force great many people who traditionally have reacted rather than acted into genuine executives and decision makers. If properly used, for instance, it should free senior executives from much of the preoccupation with events inside the organization and should make it much easier for them to go and focus on the
outside where the organizational results are actually produced.
So that's all on Effective Executive!!
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