I have a weakness for the tone of The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker; I really like the way the book is written and enjoy similar books. I’m not quite sure how to describe the tone. It’s very authoritative, as if the author was imparting wisdom. It’s not conversational. And… well, this is going to come off as sexist, but when you say, “Man is not such a creature,” it sounds completely different from “Humans are not such creatures” and I greatly prefer the former. Of course, now I’ve shifted slightly from the tone of Drucker’s book. It’s my weblog, and I retain the right to digress.

The book lists five practices of effective executives. Each of these bullets are comprised of direct quotes from the book:

1. Effective executives know where their time goes.
2. Effective executives focus on outward contribution. They gear their efforts to results rather than to work.
3. Effective executives build on strengths — their own strengths, the strengths of their superiors, colleagues, and subordinates…. They do not build on weakness.
4. 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.
5. Effective executives, finally, make effective decisions. … 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.

My thoughts on each of these is as follows. #1: This is a huge weakness for me. I throw away so much time surfing the internet and watching TV. #2: This is rather intuitive. It reminds me also of The 4-Hour Work Week. Are you working or are you just busy? #3: This also reminds me of The 4-Hour Work Week where you are exhorted to focus on strengths instead of weaknesses. Note: When you read a lot, you’re encouraged by things showing up in multiple books. It means you’re either onto something that’s incredibly right or horribly wrong. Either one contributes to knowledge more than finding an unsubstantiated, isolated claim. Facts should not be islands. #4: This reminds me of aphorism #268 from The Art of Worldly Wisdom, “A wise man does at once, what a fool does at last.” Prioritizing was something I really focused on when I had a lot of school work. Since then, I don’t remember when’s the last time I made a daily to-do list. Time to get back in that habit. #5: This is a multi-faceted topic. It’s too complex to give a few sentences of thought on it. It’s not something that I will focus on soon. There’s only so much one can do.

There’s a great passage that reminded me of the 80-20 rule, or Pareto Principle:

The great majority of all accidents occur in one or two places in the plant. The great bulk of absenteeism is in one department. … The personnel actions to which dependence on averages will lead — for instance, the typical plantwide safety campaign — will not produce the desired results, may indeed make things worse.

There’s another section on the importance of going out and looking for oneself. Drucker uses the military as an example, that battalion commanders samples the food eaten by his men. He says, “It is that military organizations learned long ago that futility is the lot 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.” This is confirmed by what I read in Patton’s memoir, where he says 95% of the job is making sure the orders are executed. In addition, there’s a marvelous anecdote where he goes up to a group who are looking over a map trying to figure out how to cross a river. Patton informs them that he just went down to the river, crossed it, and came back. (I most certainly have misremembered this anecdote; damn audiobooks.) Here’s a great quote to sum this all up and add some more insight:

To go and look for oneself is also the best, if not the only, way to test whether the assumptions on which a decision had been made are still valid or whtether they are becoming obsolete and need to be thought through again. And one always has to expect the assumptions to become obsolete sooner or later. Reality never stands still very long.

Here are some additional quotes without any commentary from me:

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 a mark of the effective executive.

Unless a decision has “degenerated into work” it is not a decision; it is at best a good intention.

Decisions of the kind the executive has to make are not made well by acclamation. They are made well only if based on the clash of conflicting views, the dialogue between different points of view, the choice between different judgments. The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.