Are You an Effective Executive?

Summary of "Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker

• Effective executives follow eight practices, including asking what needs to be done, developing action plans, communicating, and thinking and saying "we" rather than "I."
• The executive position demands constant attention to performance-making role, and men of high effectiveness are conspicuously absent from executive positions.
• Education is crucial for remaining competitive in a highly wealthy society, and effective CEOs maintain their priorities and concentrate on several key issues.
• Time is a scarce resource, and effective executives manage their time by keeping a time log, recording events immediately, and doing away with unnecessary activities.
• CEOs must ask questions to find time-wasting and ineffective activities and diagnose issues that may be affecting the organization.
• Meetings should have a clear purpose, and executives should focus on contribution rather than results.
• Effective executives avoid building jobs to suit their personalities and focus on making the strengths of their subordinates productive.
• Effective decision-makers determine which of the four basic situations they are dealing with and put their solutions on the highest possible conceptual level.
• Effective decisions are judgments between alternatives and rarely a choice between right and wrong.
• Effectiveness can be learned and is essential for self-development, organizational development, and the fulfillment and viability of modern society.
• The book attempts to answer what makes an executive effective in an organization and presents the various dimensions of executive performance to stimulate readers to learn how to become effective executives.
• The book emphasizes the importance of ethics of action in effective decision-making.