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The Effective Executive – Effectiveness can be learned

“The Greatest Wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaningless data”

One of my most favorite business books of all time is Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive.  Peter Drucker is an author of more than 30 books and is a Professor who has taught thousands of students.  This book was written in 1967 but yet still very relevant to this day!

Now in the first chapter he talks how being effective is actually something you can learn. No such thing as a natural born leader.  Even the best of us still has to learn and apply on what they just learned.

Drucker explains that there is a difference between the Knowledge worker and the manual worker. The knowledge worker has to do something that the typical manual work can not do.

When Drucker wrote the book there was a clear divide between the knowledge and manual worker.  He considered knowledge workers as a typical c-level executive and department heads.  But there are much more roles in the modern workforce that require the employee to use their skill sets from both their on the job experience and education.

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Every employee within an organization is responsible to contribute something that can affect the company to perform in a certain way that gets results.  Everyday I go to work and ask myself “What can I do to contribute to the company?” Will my work increase the productivity and provide results?

We can review all the KPI’s and dig deep into all the business analytics.  At the end of the day what are the results you have delivered to the company’s bottom line?  Knowledge work is not defined by the quantity or costs, it is simply defined by the results.

It also doesn’t matter what level executive you are.  All the levels required the executive to be effective. But there are some executive realities that can not be controlled

  1. Time Belongs to everybody
  2. Need to take positive action to focus change
  3. ineffective in organizations must listen to execute
  4. executive is within an organization

Finally the first chapter talks five habits executive need to learn

  1. Time needs to be aware where it goes
  2. focus on contribution “What results are expected by me”
  3. Build on strengths and others
  4. set and focus on priorities
  5. Make effective decisions (remember fast decisions are wrong decisions)
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Apply these 5 habits and you will soon find out that Effectiveness can be learned.

1 thought on “The Effective Executive – Effectiveness can be learned”

  1. Pingback: The Summary of The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker | Thomas Wooldridge

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