Book Summary: The Effective Executive
The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker is a step by step guide to becoming a more productive and effective executive. There are a few simple concepts that once mastered will help you develop as a leader and assist you in supporting the workers around you.
Related Book Summaries:
The Hard Thing About Hard Things – Ben Horowitz – Book Summary
Antifragile – Nicholas Nassim Taleb – Book Summary
So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Cal Newport
The Effective Executive Quotes:
Management is doing things right, leadership is doing the right things.
What’s measured improves.
Book Summary Notes: The Effective Executive
- As a leader you must learn your own strengths, as well as when to use them and appreciate that time is the most precious resource of all.
- Effective executives, or any leader for that matter, must facilitate effective communication within their teams while also encouraging the development of their employees skills.
- Set the example by spending time on learning and expanding your own skillsets.
- Leaders are judged by their results, make sure you have plotted the correct path to work towards your goals.
- Any decisions you make as a leader are open to criticism. Make sure that when you make a decision you would be happy to stand by it even if it came under heavy criticism. Sometimes it can be valuable to simply do nothing unless the cost of not acting was outweighed by the level of risk and reward. For example by acting you take on small risk for a disproportionately large reward.
- Follow through on your decisions.
- As a leader you will often be presented with many views on an issue. Listen to them all and weigh them against past outcomes as the basis for your decision making. Hearing many viewpoints will allow you to stay open minded on the topic.
- When evaluating your own effectiveness make sure to contrast your results against what was expected of you.
- Eliminate any activities that only serve to waste or ‘kill’ your time. Sometimes this can include social outings or things such as client dinners if they do not align strongly with your goals.
- Delegation is useful but only when the other person is markedly better at the skill than yourself. Only delegate to people’s strengths.
