The Effective Executive

The fundamental problem is the reality around the executive. Unless he changes it by deliberate action, the flow of events will determine what he is concerned with and what he does.

Effectiveness, in other words is a habit, that is a complex of practices. And practices can always be learned. Practices are simple, deceptively so; even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in understanding a practice. But practices are always exceedingly hard to do well. They have to be acquired as we all learned the multiplication table, that is, repeated ad nauseam until ‘6 × 6 = 36’ has become an unthinking, conditioned reflex and a firmly ingrained habit.

There 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 can’t 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.

First one tries to identify and eliminate the things that need not be done at all, the things that are purely waste of time without any results whatever. To find these time-wastes, 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.

The 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, therefore, a mark of the effective executive.

A work force may, indeed, be too small for the task. And the work then suffers, if it gets done at all. But this is not the rule. Much more common is the work force that is too big for effectiveness, the work force that spends, therefore, an increasing amount of its time ‘interacting’ rather than working.

Another common time-waster is malorganization. Its symptom is an excess of meetings. Meetings are by definition a concession to 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 know what he needs to know to do his job. Everyone 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.

The last major time-waster is malfunction in information.

Even worse, but equally common, is information in the wrong form.

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 an hour there.

Executives who do not ask themselves: ‘What can I contribute?’ are not only likely to aim too low, they are likely to aim at the wrong things. Above all, they may define their contribution too narrowly.

The most common cause of executive failure is inability or unwillingness to change with the demands of a new position. The executive who keeps on doing what he has done successfully before he moved is almost bound to fail.

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, and how do you need it, and in what form?’

We know very little about self-development. But we do know one thing: people in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment.

Focusing on contribution turns one of the inherent weaknesses of the executive’s situation – his dependence on other people, his being within organization – into a source of strength.

Whoever tries to place a man or staff an organization to avoid weakness will end up at best with mediocrity. The idea that there are ‘well-rounded’ people, people who have only strengths and no weaknesses (whether the term used is the ‘whole man’, the ‘mature personality’, the ‘well-adjusted personality’, or the ‘generalist’) is a prescription for mediocrity if not for incompetence. Strong people always have strong weaknesses too. Where there are peaks, there are valleys.

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.

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.

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.

The standard of any human group is set by the performance of the leaders.