The Effective Executive
by Peter F. Drucker
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Book Summary Information
Author: Peter F. DruckerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-08
ISBN: 0060516070
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Collins
Book Reviews of The Effective Executive
Book Review: The Right Ideas For Management
Summary: 5 Stars
Peter Drucker died on November 11, 2005 at the age of 95. His life and work spanned sixty years and he left behind a body of knowledge and ideas that continue to influence all knowledge workers today. In this book he demonstrates an uncanny ability to see organizations in all their complexity and reduce management problems to their essentials. Like a virtuoso musician, he rarely hits a wrong note, and each idea blends flawlessly with the next. He provides a complete model for management effectiveness that is theoretically sound and solidly based on his experience. This is perhaps the most useful of his 38 books and distills a lifetime of management consulting into a few concise lessons that get to the root of what managers need to do. It provides a complete course in management in a thin book of just 192 pages.
Drucker starts by arguing that all knowledge workers are executives and that effectiveness should be defined as "getting the right things done." He develops his ideas from real experience, supporting them using real-life stories of successes and failures taken from business and politics. He structures the book around five essential practices, which he found all effective managers have in common: 1) track where your time goes; 2) focus on your outward contribution; 3) build on strengths (yours and others'); 4) do first things first; and 5) -- perhaps most interesting and least intuitive -- follow a decision-making process that builds on opinions and encourages dissent.
In elaborating these five essential practices, Drucker presents many insightful findings. However, what is most impressive about the book is not any particular idea or piece of advice, but how his many ideas are tied together into a coherent whole, leading to practical advice on how to do things better.
My own experience of the last 30 years indicates that, in spite of much thought and many advances, management has not improved greatly in the past 100 years. Drucker's lessons haven't got passed on to individual managers in the organizations in which I've worked. These were mostly managed by untrained and inexperienced executives and demonstrated typical levels of dysfunction. In large companies, small companies, failed startup companies, failed acquisitions of entrepreneurial companies by larger companies and failed business reengineering efforts, I've experienced many examples of Drucker's advice not being followed -- including all of the following:
- Managers who consistently spent too much time managing crises and left important work undone
- Culture that evolved into a culture of fear and blame, where heroes were worshipped and winners took all the rewards
- Poor, hasty decisions that were made by high level executives based on insufficient information
- Banishment of dissent and an unwritten policy of "don't ask, don't tell"
Could these failures have been avoided or is managing just too hard? Drucker's criteria for effective management are simple, but not easily followed. Drucker points out that executives tend towards ineffectiveness unless they put energy into the five practices. Although people don't set out to be bad managers, I've frequently seen good people rendered ineffective by the burden of impossible jobs, by mindless assumptions that could not be disputed, and by decisions that could not be questioned. The drive and energy needed to fix this has to come from an extraordinary and dedicated leader -- and this rarely happens. In the same way that entropy dictates that natural systems tend towards disorder, the natural order of organizations dictates that energy drains out of companies and their managers until they become dysfunctional. Hence the frequent rise and fall of our organizations, which are a microcosm for the rise and fall of our nations and civilizations.
It would be hard to read this book and not gain from the experience, but although Drucker was a journalist and his writing is lucid and well-structured, his old-fashioned style makes his book less easy to read than it might be. Also, Drucker's ego sometimes gets in the way. For example, he rarely acknowledges his influences, and when he does, it's usually people he consulted with, like Alfred Sloan, Jr of General Motors, from whom he can claim credit by association. He appears to come up with his huge fund of ideas as if from thin air. This is unfortunate, because there would be great value in understanding where his ideas came from and their links to the ideas of like-minded experts in related areas of thought. For example, one aspect of executive effectiveness that is strikingly missing from his model is motivation. Drucker doesn't address what drives people to excellence and how managers can motivate others.
Drucker may have passed on, but his ideas have not. Minor criticisms aside, this could be the only book you need on your path to becoming a better manager. As Drucker says, "Self-development of the executive toward effectiveness is the only available answer. It is the only way in which organization goals and individual needs can come together." Effectiveness can be learned and the five habits are a good place to start. Certainly Drucker's ideas could be worked into any training program and his book provides the material for a life-time's work of self-improvement. You will learn a great deal by simply reading the book and relating it to your experience and it may inspire you to make some significant changes in the way you do your work.
Graham Lawes
Summary of The Effective Executive
The measure of the executive, Peter Drucker reminds us, is the ability to "get the right things done." This usually involves doing what other people have overlooked as well as avoiding what is unproductive. Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that mold them into results.
Drucker identifies five practices essential to business effectiveness that can, and must, be learned:
- Management of time
- Choosing what to contribute to the practical organization
- Knowing where and how to mobilize strength for best effect
- Setting up the right priorities
- And Knitting all of them together with effective decision making
Ranging widely through the annals of business and government, Peter Drucker demonstrates the distinctive skill of the executive and offers fresh insights into old and seemingly obvious business situations.
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