The Effective Executive

Set Up

Peter Drucker may be the most quoted business writer of all time. Every business class, research article, or management book I have read somehow references his wisdom. Over fifty years ago, Mr. Drucker established the basic behaviors of successful executive managers, and we continue to learn them over in our day and age. The Manager-Tools podcast recommends reading this book at least once per year.

Game Rules

In his 2004 article (he died in 2005 at the age of 96) in Harvard Business Review, What Makes an Effective Executive?, Drucker continues to refine his original concepts. The three that I look to most often are:

Do what is best for the organization

Drucker looks to people’s strengths and how those strengths could be turned to best benefit the organization. He focuses on the contributions of team members that deliver the organization’s desired results. In the Prezi, you see that the only weakness that matters is, “Would I let me son or daughter work with this person?” Every other weakness is acceptable because we must accept those in order to get the strengths that are important to the organization. Our opinions of people are secondary to their results.

Make Decisions, develop Action Plans

Drucker wants effective decisions. He would often create disagreement to his ideas in order to listen to opposing viewpoints. He did not like team leaders to say, “Yes, sir.” Having disagreement provides options, and options ensure that there is a best decision as well as an alternate, Plan B, if necessary.

Run productive meetings

The best example of Drucker running meetings is his ability to focus on one thing at a time. If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. His ideal meeting discusses one topic at a time, makes a decision and an action plan, then determines a time to check on progress.
A deeper resource for meetings is Let’s Stop Meeting Like This by Dick Axelrod.

See George Ambler, in his blog Helping Leaders Grow, 5 Habits of Effective Executives, for another summary on Drucker’s ideas.

Winning Strategy

When I teach Drucker, it is usually in the context of making decisions and following-up on progress. In my mind, this is the one skill upon which all other management techniques rely.

 • Before you Make Decisions in a meeting, encourage disagreement and respectful debate.

 • When you Make Decisions, do so for the benefit of the organization.

 • When you Make Decisions, immediately make an Action Plan to execute the decision.

Rule Books

• Publisher Page: The Effective Executive
• Article: Harvard Business Review, June 2004, What Makes and Effective Executive
• Blog: George Ambler, 5 Habits of Effective Executives
• Podcast: Manager-Tools, Books to Read (Or Read Again) in 2014
• Compaion Book: The Effective Executive in Action
• Prezi: Brian Suyat, Book Report: The Effective Executive
• For more ways to implement Peter Drucker’s manager behaviors, consider the companion workbook: The Effective Executive in Action.

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See the full list of What’s this Book for more summaries of the most influential books in organizational rules.

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