This is another book that I found in the library at work. I picked it up because it was short, and I had heard about Peter Drucker, but never read any of this stuff.

The title didn’t particularly appeal to me. I am not an executive, I thought, and I have no plans to become one. However, the sub-title: “The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done” piqued me interest. I have long been a fan of “Getting Things Done” by David Allen, but that book is about getting how to get stuff done and contains no advice for choosing what to get done.

The premise of the book is that the job of an executive is to be effective, and that effectiveness can be learned. The goal of the book is to give people the tools to learn it.

To my pleasant surprise I quickly discovered that Drucker defines an Executive so broadly that I consider myself an executive.

Every knowledge working in modern organization is an “executive” if, by virtue of his position or knowledge, he is responsible for a contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organization to perform and obtain results.

The book covers a lot of ground, but here I want to focus on thee of the topics covered: Decision making, effective meetings, and time management.

Decisions

Making decisions is an important part of an executives job. But people often get decision wrong. Drucker is quite strick about what it takes for a decision to be made:

A decision has not been made until people know:

the name of the person accountable for carrying it out;

the deadline;

the names of the people who will be affected by the decision and therefore have to know about, understand, and approve it – or at least not be strongly apposed to it – and

the names of the people who have to be informed of the decision, even if they are not directly affected by it. (page xiv)

A lot of the decision that gets made at my work don’t live up to these standards. In a small company many decision affect the entire company and yet, not everyone is aware of the decision. This is often due to ill defined communication channels.

The difficulty of decisions doesn’t end here though. A decision should also be converted into action, and this also requires work:

Converting a decision into action requires answering several distinct questions: Who has to know of this decision? What action has to be taken? Who is to take it? And what does the action have to be such that the people who have to di ti can do it? (page 138)

And again, if this doesn’t happen you still haven’t decided anything, says Drucker:

In fact, no decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has becomes someones work assignment and responsibility. (page 138)

We don’t make as many decision at my work as we think we do. I think Drucker would say that we have a lot of intentions but make few decisions.

Meetings

Too many meetings always bespeak poor structure of jobs and the wrong organizational components. Too many meetings signify that work that should be in one job or in one component is spread over several jobs or several components. They signify that responsibility is diffused and that information is not addressed to the people who need it. (page 45)

Time management

A common cause of time-waste is largely under the executive’s control and can be eliminate d by him. That is the time of others he himself wastes. Effective executives have learned to ask systematically and without coyness: “What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness”. (p. 38-39)

I have been on the recieving end of these kinds of meetings often, and I should try not to do the same. The monthly one-on-one meetings could be a good way to ask about this “How have I wasted your time since last meeting” or “what has been the greatest waste of time since last meeting, and can I do anything to help?”

a well-managed orginazation is a “dull” organization. The “dramatic” things in such an organization are basic decisions that make the future, rather than heroics in moppin up yesterday. (page 42)

Other good stuff

One needs not know in detail what to do with “human relation” if an accountant, or how to promote a new branded product if an engineer. But one has a responsibility to know at least what these areas are about, whey they are around, and what they are trying to do. (page 20)

I try to figure out what questions are common in that fields, and how they might go about answering those questions. I think has given me a lot of valuable lesson that I can take back and apply to my own field.

The Scientist in government who focuses on contribution soon realizes that he must explain to the policy-maker where a scientific development might lead; he has to do something forbidden to the scientist as a rule – that is, speculate about the outcome of a line of scientific inquiry. (page 63)