Title The Effective Executive

Author Peter Drucker

Year Published 1966

Kind of Book Business/Productivity

How strongly I recommend it 6/10 

My Impressions A book about using your time and resources effectively. The book gives advice on time management, hiring and firing practices, as well as decision making strategies. Some powerful advice, but the writing was excruciatingly dry.

Date Read circa 2020

Practical Takeaways

  • Make special effort to gain direct access to outside reality outside of your cooperation (especially as you move higher and higher in an organization)

  • Know where your time goes

  • Focus on outward contribution

  • Gear your efforts to results rather than being busy

  • Concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results

  • Do first things first —and second things not at all

  • Track how you spend every hour of the day for a week (don't assume you know how you spend it) track it on the hour every hour (don't assume you will remember and do it all at the end of the day from memory)

  • First, eliminate things that don't need to be done at all

  • Ask yourself "what would happen if this were not done at all?" if the answer is "nothing" then stop doing it

  • Ask yourself "which of the activities on my time log could be done by somebody else just as well, if not better?"

  • Ask your employees "What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to you effectiveness?"

  1. Track

  2. Eliminate

  3. Delegate

  • Assign the minimum amount of people possible to work on a project together

  • Only have people on staff who need to do their job everyday (don't hire a lawyer full time if you only need him once a month) (it is infinitely cheaper, and he will distract your other workers)

  • Make meetings purposeful and directed

  • Make meetings the exception rather than the rule

  • Make mandatory meetings 90minutes and make sure nothing will distract you for that whole time (any more time and you lose concentration, any less time and you can't get anything done)

  • Don't schedule short 15 or 30minute meetings (nothing will get accomplished)

  • Know thy time

  • State at the outset of the meeting the purpose and contribution it is to achieve

  • End meetings by stating whether or not the meeting accomplished what is was supposed to accomplish

  • Hire people based on their strengths (not on their lack of weaknesses)

  • Hire people to work with you who are better than you

  • Don't worry about how much of a prima donna an employee is as long as he gets results

  • (when hiring) ask yourself "what can he do uncommonly well?" not "what can he not do?"

  • If a job has defeated two or three people in succession should be gotten rid of (the problem is with the job itself, not with the people)

  • Make jobs for the people you hire big (it will bring out whatever strengths they may have and they will rise to the challenge)

  • Move anyone who's boss says he is 'indispensable' (that either means that his superior or subordinate is weak and should be removed when found out)

  • Find out how each employee works best (AM or PM? Alone or with people? With notes or on the fly? Etc.)

  • Do one thing at a time

  • Only work on one (maybe two) projects at a time

  • (sunk cost fallacy) Ask yourself "If I did not already start this, would I do it now?"

  • Bring in fresh people often (otherwise the company become inbred and sterile)

  • Constantly reconsider your priorities

  • Encourage disagreement to stimulate the imagination

  • (in a disagreement) First understand, then figure who is right and wrong

  • Think of each decision as a surgery. ask yourself if it is really necessary to make a decision

  • Ask yourself "what happens if we do nothing?" if the answer is "it will take care of itself" then do nothing

  • Either act or don't. Never take half action

  • Do not make a decision until you fully understand it

  • Record where your time goes

 

Big Ideas

  • There is little correlation between a man's IQ and his effectiveness

  • Time is totally irreplaceable (unlike most every other resource)

  • Our subjective sense of how we spend our time is terrible

  • We tend to think that far too many things can only be done by ourselves

  • The more people you put on a project the longer it takes to get done

Because

  • People spend more time interacting than working when you put too many people on a project

  • Strong people always have strong weaknesses too. Where there are peaks, there are valleys.

  • Human excellence can only be achieved in one area, or at the most in very few

  • We can see others strengths/weaknesses/biases better than our own (bias blindspot)

  • We abandon the things we postpone

  • Disagreement stimulates the imagination (and discourse)

  • Bringing in fresh people to a team or project stimulates the energy

Surprising Facts

  • Even in a sealed room with the lights on, people lose their sense of time after only a few hours

Unknown Terms

Knowledge Worker (knowledge work): work which can be differentiated from other forms of work by its emphasis on "non-routine" problem solving that requires a combination of convergent and divergent thinking. Examples include programmers, physicians, pharmacists, architects, engineers, scientists, design thinkers, public accountants, lawyers, and academics, whose job is to "think for a living".