The Effective Executive:The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

In any company, large or small, there are always average workers and good workers, but there are also a few workers with high potential, that is, those people who will become the future leaders of the company.  But how do they go from being “high-potential workers” to being “effective executives”? And what is it that makesan effective executive?

No one was ever more qualified to answer that question than Peter F. Drucker, long regarded to be "the dean of business and management philosophers."  And Drucker gave us that answer in THE EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE, one of his most concise, yet brilliant, works.

The measure of the executive, Drucker reminds us, is the ability to "get the right things done."  This usually involves doing what other people have overlooked, as well as avoiding what is unproductive.  Notably, intelligence, imagination, and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that mold these into results.

As you’ll learn in Big Ideas from the Effective Executive, Drucker identified five practices essential to business effectiveness that can—and must—be mastered:

1. Managing time;
2. Choosing what to contribute to the organization;
3. Knowing where and how to mobilize strength for best effect;
4. Setting the right priorities; and
5. Knitting all of them together with effective decision-making.

This is not just important to the executive, it’s important to everyone, because as Drucker explained, “Only executive effectiveness can enable this society to harmonize its two needs: the needs of the organization to obtain from the individual the contribution it needs, and the need of the individual to have the organization serve as his tool for the accomplishment of his purposes”