Decision-making and the effective executive

Abstract

• eecutives need to manage thei time - 1st mus trak ti, then control it. - schedulee big chunks of time big projects - it’s the interuptions that make doing these projects in shorter periods of time a problem. ———————- Notes for: The Effective Executive ———————- ———————- p. 6: “An effective executive is not “tale…” Chapter: Author’s Note ———————- p. 8: “Management is largely by example.” Chapter: Preface ———————- p. 9: “Society has become a society of organiztions…” Chapter: Preface ———————- p. 11: “expected to get the right things done” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned ———————- p. 12: “For manual work, we need only efficiency” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “that is, the ability to do things right rather than the ability to get the right things done.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive “The manual worker can always be judged in terms of the quantity and quality of a definable and discrete output, such as a pair of shoes.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 14: “knowledge worker cannot be supervised…” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “The knowledge worker cannot be supervised closely or in detail.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive “He can only be helped. But he must direct himself, and he must direct himself toward performance and contribution, that is, toward effectiveness.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 14: “motivation of the knowledge worker” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his being effective, on his being able to achieve. Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive “If effectiveness is lacking in his work, his commitment to work and to contribution will soon wither, and he will become a time-server going through the motions from 9 to 5.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 15: “produces knowledge,” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “He produces knowledge, ideas, information. By themselves these “products” are useless. Somebody else, another man of knowledge, has to take them as his input and convert them into his output before they have any reality.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive PN- Bookkeepers are this type of knowledge worker. Managers are the second, converting the knowledge results. ———————- p. 15: “competitive advantage is education.” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “The only resource in respect to which America can possibly have a competitive advantage is education.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 16: ““executive”” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “Every knowledge worker 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 to obtain results,”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 16: “make decisions;” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “Such a man (or woman) must make decisions; he cannot just carry out orders.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive “And he is supposed, by virtue of his knowledge, to be better equipped to make the right decision than anyone else. He may be overridden; he may be demoted or fired. But so long as he has the job the goals, the standards, and the contribution are in his keeping.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 16: “needs both” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “For the knowledge organization, as we have been learning these last few years, needs both “managers” and “individual professional contributors” in positions of responsibility, decision-making, and authority.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 17: “managers who are not executives.” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “There are many managers who are not executives. Many people, in other words, are superiors of other people and often of fairly large numbers of other people and still do not seriously affect the ability of the organization to perform. Most foremen in a manufacturing plant belong here. They are “overseers” in the literal sense of the word.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 17: ““overseers”” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “They are “managers” in that they manage the work of others. But they have neither the responsibility for, nor authority over, the direction, the content, and the quality of the work or the methods of its performance.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 18: “Knowledge work is not defined” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “Knowledge work is not defined by quantity. Neither is knowledge work defined by its costs. Knowledge work is defined by its results.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- pp. 19-20: “same kind of work as the president” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “The most subordinate manager, we now know, may do the same kind of work as the president of the company or the administrator of the government agency; that is, plan, organize, integrate, motivate, and measure. His compass may be quite limited, but within his sphere, he is an executive.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 21: “time tends to belong to everybody e…” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “1. The executive’s time tends to belong to everybody else.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 22: ““Doctor, I can’t sleep.” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “When the patient says, “Doctor, I can’t sleep. I haven’t been able to go to sleep the last three weeks,” he is telling the doctor what the priority area is.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 23: “more complex universe.” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “But events rarely tell the executive anything, let alone the real problem. For the doctor, the patient’s complaint is central because it is central to the patient. The executive is concerned with a much more complex universe.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 23: “flow of events determine what he do…” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously, he will fritter himself away”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 23: “work on the truly important,” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “What the executive needs are criteria which enable him to work on the truly important, that is, on contributions and results, even though the criteria are not found in the flow of events.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 23: “make use of what he contributes.” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “he is within an organization. This means that he is effective only if and when other people make use of what he contributes.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 23: “multiplying the strength of an indi…” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “Organization is a means of multiplying the strength of an individual. It takes his knowledge and uses it as the resource, the motivation, and the vision of other knowledge workers.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 25: “patient is not a member of the hospital …” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “But the patient is not a member of the hospital organization. For the patient, the hospital is “real” only while he stays there. His greatest desire is to go back to the “non hospital” world as fast as possible.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 26: “Yet it stands under the law” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “Yet it stands under the law that governs the structure and size of animals and plants: The surface goes up with the square of the radius, but the mass grows with the cube. The larger the animal becomes, the more resources have to be devoted to the mass and to the internal tasks, to circulation and information, to the nervous system, and so on.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive PN- Polar Bears have a smaller surface area to weight ratio and smaller animals. This is why they can survive in the cold artic. ———————- p. 26: “mass of the amoeba is directly conc…” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “Most of the mass of the amoeba is directly concerned with survival and procreation. Most of the mass of the higher animal its resources, its food, its energy supply, its tissues serve to overcome and offset the complexity of the structure and the isolation from the outside.”, Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive ———————- p. 27: “organization is an organ of society” Chapter: 1: Effectiveness Can Be Learned “An organization is not, like an animal, an end in itself, and successful by the mere act of perpetuating the species. An organization is an organ of society and fu