The Effective Executive
Peter F. Drucker · 1966
The Effective Executive (1966) is a book by Peter F. Drucker on Knowledge-worker effectiveness. Effectiveness, doing the right things, isn't talent or charisma but five learnable habits any knowledge worker can build: manage your time, aim at contribution, build on strength, concentrate, and decide well.
The original productivity classic, proof that getting the right things done is a discipline you practice, not a gift you're born with.
Two of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of The Effective Executive pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.
- Effectiveness is not efficiency. Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the RIGHT things. Intelligence, imagination and knowledge are only resources, effectiveness is the 'technology' that converts them into results, and brilliant people are often strikingly ineffective.
- Drucker redefines the 'executive' as ANY knowledge worker who, by position or knowledge, makes decisions that materially affect the results of the whole, not just bosses with subordinates. Because such work can't be supervised like manual labor, effectiveness is the one contribution demanded of it.
The other 5 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 9 chapters
The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.
- Effectiveness Can Be Learned
- The Four Realities That Trap the Executive
- Know Thy Time
- What Can I Contribute?
- Making Strength Productive
- First Things First
- The Elements of Decision-Making
- Effective Decisions Grow from Disagreement
- Effectiveness Must Be Learned
Finish The Effective Executive tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 11 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
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