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What it argues
The Effective Executive is Peter Drucker's 1967 argument that effectiveness — getting the right things done — is a discipline that can be learned, and that it is the most important capability a knowledge worker can develop. The book is not about leadership in the inspirational sense. It's about practice: the habits, methods, and decisions that allow someone to convert their time and attention into results.
Drucker opens with the claim that intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are potential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results. He then describes the five practices that effectiveness requires: managing time (knowing where time actually goes), focusing on contribution rather than effort, building on strengths rather than weaknesses, concentrating on the few decisive areas where superior performance produces outstanding results, and making effective decisions.
What it gets right
- 1.
Effectiveness is a discipline, not a talent. The practices that produce results can be identified, studied, and cultivated by anyone willing to do the work.
- 2.
Track your time in actual use, not as you imagine it. Most executives are shocked by how little of their time goes toward the work that matters most.
- 3.
Focus on contribution, not on effort. The question to ask is not 'what am I working on?' but 'what result do I owe this organization and these people?'
What it covers
Who wrote it
Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) was an Austrian-American management consultant, educator, and author whose work shaped the foundations of modern management. He wrote more than thirty-nine books and contributed regularly to Harvard Business Review for more than twenty years. Drucker coined many now-standard management concepts, including management by objectives, knowledge worker, and the importance of asking "what business are we in?" He taught at New York University and Claremont Graduate University, where the management school was named in his honor. He is widely regarded as the founder of modern management as a discipline.
