The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker

I finished this book in May 2025. I recommend this book 10/10.

Why you should read this book:

This is the book that give knowledge workers the priorities to be effective. As the book states, everyone are an executive if they behave like one. And, that is done by being effective.

Get your copy here.

🚀 The book in three sentences

1. What needs to be done, and what is right for the enterprise?

2. Focus on time and strengths, and do one thing; then evaluate.

3. Be clear on what and how you can contribute and add value.

   
   

📝 My notes and thoughts

• xi. Eight practices for being effective:

  • Ask "What needs to be done?"

  • Ask " What is right for the enterprise?"

  • Develop action plans

  • Be responsible for decisions

  • Be responsible for communications

  • Focus on opportunities rather than problems

  • Run productive meetings

  • Think and say "we" rather than "I"

• P6. In a guerrilla war, every man is an "executive." This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a recent newspaper interview with a young American infantry captain in the Vietnam jungle.

  • Asked by the reporter, "How in this confused situation can you retain command?" the young captain said: "Around here, I am only the guy who is responsible. If these men don't know what to do when they run into an enemy in the jungle, I'm too far away to tell them. My job is to make sure they know. What they do depends on the situation which only they can judge. The responsibility is always mine, but the decision lies with whoever is on the spot."

• P9. The most subordinate manager, we now know, may do the same kind of work as the president of the company or the administrator of the government agency; that is, plan, organize, integrate, motivate, and measure. His compass may be quite limited, but within his sphere, he is an executive.

• P23. Mastery might well elude him; for this one might need special talents. But what is needed in effectiveness is competence. What is needed are "the scales." These are essentially five such practices—five such habits of the mind that have to be acquired to be an effective executive:

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

  • 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?" rather than with the work to be done, let alone with its techniques and tools.

  • 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. They do not build on weakness. They do not start out with the things they cannot do.

  • Effective executives concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results. They 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.

  • Effective executives, finally, make effective decisions. They know that this is, above all, a matter of system—of the right steps in the right sequence. They know that an effective decision is always a judgment based on "dissenting opinions" rather than on "consensus on the facts." And they know that to make many decisions fast means to make the wrong decisions. What is needed are few, but fundamental, decisions. What is needed is the right strategy rather than razzle-dazzle tactics.

• P30. Since the knowledge worker directs himself, he must understand what achievement is expected of him and why. He must also understand the work of the people who have to use his knowledge output. For this, he needs a good deal of information, decision, instruction—all things that take time. And contrary to common belief, this time demand is made not only on his superior but equally on his colleagues. The knowledge worker must be focused on the results and performance goals of the entire organization to have any results and performance at all. 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. Whether knowledge workers perform well in large organizations, senior executives take time out, on a regular schedule, to sit down with them, sometimes all the way down to green juniors, and ask: "What should we at the head of this organization know about your work? What do you want to tell me regarding this organization? Where do you see opportunities we do not exploit? Where do you see dangers to which we are still blind? And. all together, what do you want to know from me about the organization?"

• P36. Systematic time management is, therefore, the next step. One has to find the nonproductive, time-wasting activities and get rid of them if one possibly can. This requires asking oneself a number of diagnostic questions.

  • First one tries to identify and eliminate the things that need not to be done at all, the things that are purely waste of time without any results whatever. To find these time-wasters, one asks of all activities in the time records: "What would happen if this were not done at all?" And if the answer is, "Nothing would happen," then obviously the conclusion is to stop doing it.

  • Next question is: "Which of the activities on my time log could be done by somebody else just as well, if not better?"

  • A common cause of time-waste is largely under the executive's control and can be eliminated by him. That is the time of others he himself wastes. There is no one symptom for this. But there is still a simple way to find out. That is to ask other people. Effective executives have learned to ask systematically and without coyness: "What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness?" To ask this question, and to ask it without being afraid of the truth, is the mark of the effective executive. The manner in which an executive does productive work may still be a major waste of somebody else's time.

• P44. Meetings are by definition a concession of deficient organization for one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time. In an ideally designed structure (which in a changing world is of course only a dream) there would be no meetings. Everybody would have the resources available to him to do his job. We meet because people holding different jobs have to cooperate to get a specific task done. We meet because the knowledge and experience needed in a specific situation are not available in one head, but have to be pieced together out of the experience and knowledge of several people. There will always be more than enough meetings. Organizations will always require so much working together that the attempts of well-meaning behavioral scientists to create opportunities for "cooperation" may be somewhat redundant. But if executives in an organization spend more than a fairly small part of their time in meetings, it is a sure sign of mal-organization. Every meeting generates a host of little follow-up meetings—some formal, some informal, but both stretching out for hours. Meetings, therefore, need to be purposefully directed. An undirected meeting is not just a nuisance; it is a danger. But above all, meetings have to be the exception rather than the rule. An organization in which everybody meets all the time is an organization in which no one gets anything done.

• P49. The effective executive, therefore, knows that he has to consolidate his discretionary time. He knows that he needs large chunks of time and that small driblets are no time at all. Even one quarter of the working day, if consolidated in large time units, is usually enough to get the important things done. But even three quarters of the working day are useless if they are only available as fifteen minutes here or half and hour there. The final step in time management is, therefore, to consolidate the time that record and analysis show as normally available and under the executive's control. There are good many ways of doing this. Some people usually senior men, work at home one day a week; this is a particularly common method of time-consolidation for editors or research scientists. Other men schedule all the operating work—the meetings, reviews, problem-sessions, and so on—for two days a week, for example. Monday and Friday, and set aside the mornings of the remaining day for consistent, continuing work on major issues.

• P53. The man who focuses on efforts and who stresses his downward authority is a subordinate, no matter how exalted his title or rank. But the man who focuses on contribution and who takes responsibility for results, no matter how junior, is in the most literal sense of the phrase, "top management." He holds himself accountable for the performance of the whole.

• P62. If a man wants to be an executive—that is, if he wants to be considered responsible for his contribution—he has to concern himself with the usability of his "product"—that is, his knowledge. Effective executives know this. For they 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. Effective executives find themselves asking other people in the organization, their superiors, their subordinates, but above all, their colleagues in other areas: "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?"

• P64. If I asked to name the men who, in my own experience, had the best human relations, I would name three: General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army in World War II; Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., the head of General Motors from the early nineteen-twenties into the mid-fifties; and one of Sloan's senior associates, Nicholas Dreystadt, the man who built Cadillac into a brand. All three had to make crucial "people" decisions. But not one of the three worried about "human relations." They took them for granted. The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations:

  • communications;

  • teamwork;

  • self-development; and,

  • development of others.

• P68. Individual self-development, in large measure, depends on the focus on contributions. The man who asked himself, "What is the most important contribution I can make to the performance of this organization?" asks in effect, "What self-development do I need? What knowledge and skills do I have to acquire to make the contribution I should be making? What strengths do I have to put to work? What standards do I have to set myself?"

• P70. Focusing on contribution fights the temptation to stay within the organization. It leads the executive—especially the top-level man—to lift his eyes from the inside of efforts, work, and relationships, to the outside; that is, to the results of the organization. It makes him try hard to have direct contact with the outside—whether markets and customers, patients in a community, or various "publics" which are the outside of a government agency. To focus on contribution is to focus on effectiveness.

• P90. Yet by 1942, Marshall had developed the largest and clearly the ablest group of general officers in American history. There were almost no failures in it and not many second-raters. This—one of the greatest educational feats in military history—was done by a man who lacked all the normal trappings of "leadership," such as the personal magnetism or the towering self-confidence of a Montgomery, a de Gaulle or a MacArthur. What Marshall had were principles. "What can this man do?" was his constant question. And if a man could do something, his lack became secondary.

• P93. Because the superior is human, he has his strengths; but he also has limitations. To build on his strengths, that is, to enable him to do what he can do, will make him effective—and will make the subordinate effective. To try to build on his weakness will be as frustrating and as stultifying as to try to build on the weakness of a subordinate. The effective executive, therefore, asks: "What can my boss do really well?" "What has he done really well?" "What does he need to know to use his strength?" "What does he need to get from me to perform?" He does not worry too much over what the boss cannot do.

• P96. Making strengths productive is equally important in respect to one's own abilities and work habits. It is not very difficult to know how we achieve results. By the time one has reached adulthood, one has a pretty good idea as to whether one works better in the morning or at night. One usually knows whether one writes best by making a great many drafts fast, or by working meticulously on every sentence until it is right. One knows whether one speaks well in public from a prepared text, from notes, without any prop, or not at all. One knows whether one works well as a member of a committee or better alone—or whether one is altogether unproductive as a committee member. Some people work best if they have a detailed outline in front of them; that is, if they have thought through the job before they start it. Others work best with nothing more than a few rough notes. Some work best under pressure. Others work better if they have a good deal of time and can finish the job long before the deadline. Some are "readers," others "listeners" All this one knows, about oneself—just as one knows whether one is right-handed or left-handed. These, it will be said, are superficial. This is not necessarily correct—a good many of these traits and habits mirror fundamentals of a man's personality, such as his perception of the world and of himself in it. But even if superficial, these work habits are a source of effectiveness. And most of them are compatible with any kind of work. The effective executive knows this and acts accordingly.

• P98. These are not the things most people have in mind when they talk about the strengths or weaknesses of a man. They usually mean knowledge of a discipline or talent in an art. But temperament is also a factor in accomplishment and a big one. An adult usually knows quite a bit about his own temperament. To be effective he builds on what he know he can do and does it the way he has found out he works best.

• P98. Unlike everything else discussed in this book so far, making strength productive is as much an attitude as it is a practice. But it can be improved with practice. If one disciplines oneself to ask about one's associates—subordinates as well as superiors—"What can this man do?" rather than "What can he not do?" one soon will acquire the attitude of looking for strengths and of using strength. And eventually one will learn to ask this question of oneself. In every area of effectiveness within an organization, one feeds the opportunities and starves the problems. Nowhere is this more important than in response to people. The effective executive looks upon people including himself as an opportunity. He knows that only strength produces results. Weakness only produces headaches—and the absence of weakness produces nothing. He knows, moreover, that the standard of any human group is set by the performance of the leaders. And he, therefore, never allows leadership performance to be based on anything but true strength.

• P104. The first rule of the concentration of executive efforts is to slough off the past that has ceased to be productive. 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 curtail it sharply.

• P108. There are always more productive tasks for tomorrow than there is time to do them and more opportunities than there are capable people to take care of them—not to mention the always abundant problems and crises. A decision therefore has to be made as to which tasks deserve priority and which are of less importance. The only question is which will make the decision—the executive or the pressure. But somehow the tasks will be adjusted to the available time and the opportunities will become available only to the extent to which capable people are around to take charge of them. If the pressures rather than the executive are allowed to make the decision, the important tasks will predictably be sacrificed.

• P111. Setting a posteriority is also unpleasant. Every posteriority is somebody else's top priority. It is much easier to draw up a nice list of top priorities and then to hedge by trying to do "just a little bit" of everything else as well. This makes everybody happy. The only drawback is, of course, that nothing whatever gets done. A great deal could be said about the analysis of priorities. The most important thing about priorities and posteriorities is, however, not intelligent analysis but courage. Courage rather than analysis dictates the truly important rules of identifying priorities:

  • Pick the future as against the past;

  • Focus on opportunity rather than on problem;

  • Choose your own direction—rather than climb on the bandwagon; and

  • Aim high, aim for something that will make a difference, rather than for something that is "safe" and easy to do.

• P122. The Elements of the Decision Process: The truly important features of the decisions Vail and Sloan made are neither their novelty nor their controversial nature. They are:

  • The clear realization that the problem was generic and could only be solved through a decision which established a rule, a principle;

  • The definition of the specifications which the answer to the problem had to satisfy, that is, of the "boundary conditions";

  • The thinking through what is "right," that is, the solution which will fully satisfy the specifications before attention is given to the compromises, adaptations, and concessions needed to make the decision acceptable;

  • The building in other decision of the action to carry it out;

  • The "feedback" which tests the validity and effectiveness of the decision against the actual course of events.

• P129. One of the most obvious facts of social and political life is the longevity of the temporary. British licensing hours for taverns, for instance, French rent controls, or Washington "temporary" government buildings, all three hastily developed in World War I to last " a few months of temporary emergency" are still with us fifty years later. The effective decision-maker knows this. He too improvises, of course. But he asks himself every time, "If I had to live with this for a long time, would I be willing to?" And if the answer is "No," he keeps on working to find a more general, a more conceptual, a more comprehensive solution—one which establishes the right principle. As a result, the effective executive does not make many decisions. But the reason is not that he takes too long in making one—in fact, a decision in principle does not, as a rule, take longer than a decision on symptoms and expediency. The effective executive does not need to make many decisions. Because he solves generic situations through a rule and policy., he can handle most events as cases under the rule; that is, by adaption.

• P130. A decision, to be effective, needs to satisfy the boundary conditions. It needs to be adequate to its purpose. The more concise and clear boundary conditions are stated, the greater the likelihood that the decision will indeed be an effective one and will accomplish what it set out to do. Conversely, any serious shortfall in defining these boundary conditions almost certain to make a decision ineffectual, no matter how brilliant it may seem. "What is the minimum needed to resolve this problem?" is the form in which the boundary conditions are usually probed.

• P136. Converting a decision into action requires answering several distinct questions: Who has to know of this decision? What action has to be taken? Who is to take it? And what does the action have to be so that the people who have to do it can do it? The first and the last of these are too often overlooked—with dire results.

• P141. When General Eisenhower was elected president, his predecessor, Harry S. Truman, said: "Poor Ike; when he was a general, he gave an order, and it was carried out. Now he is going to sit in that big office, and he'll give an order, and not a damn thing is going to happen." The reason why "not a damn thing is going to happen" is, however, not that generals have more authority than presidents. It is military organizations learned long ago that futility is the loss of most orders and organized the feedback to check on the execution of the order. They learned long ago that to go oneself and look is the only reliable feedback. Reports—all a president normally able to mobilize—are not much help. All military service have long ago learned that the officer who has given an order goes out and sees for himself whether it has been carried out. At the least he sends one of his own aides—he never relies on what he is told by the subordinate to whom the order was given. Not that he distrusts the subordinate; he has learned from experience to distrust communications.

• P153. Effective executives know, of course, that there are fools around and that there are mischief-makers. But they do not assume that the man who disagrees with what they themselves see as clear and obvious is, therefore, either a fool or a knave. They know that unless proven otherwise, the dissenter has to be assumed to be reasonably intelligent and reasonably fair-minded. Therefore, it has to be assumed that he has reached his so obviously wrong conclusion because he sees a different reality and is concerned with a different problem. The effective executive, therefore, always asks: "What does this fellow have to see if his position were, after all, tenable, rational, intelligent?" The effective executive is concerned first with understanding. Only then does he even think about who is right and who is wrong.

• P155. There is one final question the effective decision-maker asks: "Is a decision really necessary?" One alternative is always the alternative of doing nothing. Every decision is like surgery. It is an intervention into a system and therefore carries with it the risk of shock. One does not make unnecessary decisions any more than a good surgeon does unnecessary surgery. Individual decision-makers, like individual surgeons, differ in their styles. Some are more radical or more conservative than others. But by and large, they agree on the rules.

• P157. Surgeons who only takes out half the tonsils or half the appendix risks as much infection or shock as if he did the whole job. And he has not cured the condition, has indeed made it worse. He either operates or he doesn't. Similarly, the effective decision-maker either acts or he doesn't act. He does not take half-action. This is the one thing that is always wrong, and the one sure way not to satisfy the minimum specifications, the minimum boundary conditions.

• P158. Executives are not paid for doing things they like to do. They are paid for getting the right things done—most of all in their specific task, the making of effective decisions.