The Effective Executive

Classic book on management.

https://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/Ten-Lessons-I-Learned-from-Peter-Drucker.html#articletop

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Notes

• Work force is too large if more than a small Amount of time is spent managing friction
• P38 What do I do to you that wastes your time without adding to your effectiveness? To ask this without being afraid of the truth is a mark of an effective executive
• Five things. EE know where their time goes. They gear their efforts for results, not work. They build on strengths. They focus and prioritize. Make effective decisions - based on strategy.
• Effectiveness requires competence, not special talent.
• Effectiveness means getting the right things done p22
• There is no effective personality. Effectiveness is learned.
• Point: skill and knowledge are rare, thus increasing effectiveness from people of mediocre skill or knowledge is the game of being an effective executive, in the broad sense.
• Operations research people were supposed to be polymaths, but then their deep skill would be wasted on operations? P19
• But we do have ample supply of the incompetent
• We could use people of broader knowledge. We certainly could use people of much greater abilities in many places. But not much can be done with further effort in these 2 areas. P18. Bullshit.
• Brilliant men are often strikingly ineffectual - p11
• Manual work - doing things right rather getting the right things done.
• The greatest wisdom not applied to action is meaningless data -p5
• You can manage no one yet be an executive p8
• Execs - make decisions of impact upon results
• Because of 4 affordances of the corporation, the exec should assume that he will be ineffective, unless special means are taken to become effective.