336/365 Practice effectiveness until it becomes habit (MarkG.photo, #34)

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336/365 Practice effectiveness until it becomes habit

I have not come across a single “natural”: an executive who was born effective. All the effective ones have had to learn to be effective. And all of them then had to practice effectiveness until it became habit. From "The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done" by Peter F. Drucker

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335/365 Focus on opportunities

Good executives focus on opportunities rather than problems. Problems have to be taken care of, of course; they must not be swept under the rug. But problem solving, however necessary, does not produce results. It prevents damage. Exploiting opportunities produces results. Effective executives put their best people on opportunities rather than on problems. From "The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide …

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334/365 They themselves made a mistake

Effective executives know this and check up (six to nine months later) on the results of their people decisions. If they find that a decision has not had the desired results, they don’t conclude that the person has not performed. They conclude, instead, that they themselves made a mistake. In a well-managed enterprise, it is understood that people who fail …

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333/365 Take responsibility for decisions

Take responsibility for decisions. A decision has not been made until people know: - the name of the person accountable for carrying it out; - the deadline; - the names of the people who will be affected by the decision and therefore have to know about, understand, and approve it—or at least not be strongly opposed to it; and - …

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332/365 Action plan

The action plan is a statement of intentions rather than a commitment. It must not become a straitjacket. It should be revised often, because every success creates new opportunities. So does every failure. In addition, the action plan needs to create a system for checking the results against the expectations. Effective executives usually build two such checks into their action …

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331/365 More than two at a time

The answer to the question “What needs to be done?” almost always contains more than one urgent task. But effective executives do not splinter themselves. They concentrate on one task if at all possible. If they are among those people—a sizable minority—who work best with a change of pace in their working day, they pick two tasks. I have never …

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