Awarded 1st prize for ‘The Effective Executive’ among trainee engineers from 3 countries.

1. Presentation on
The Effective Executive
By Peter F. Drucker
SUBMITTED BY:
AKASH BEHL
CAE ANALYST
MIDAS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD.

2. Chapter 1
Effectiveness can be learned
Knowledge worker = executive if he is responsible for a contribution that materially
affects the capacity of an organisation to perform and to obtain results.
Most managers are executives (but not all)
Knowledge work is defined by results (not by quantity and cost)

3. Executive realities
Captive of the organization
Operate till the result is
unachieved
Being within an
“organization”
Being “within” an
organization

4. Organization
Larger the organization, more burden on the executive
Quality matters more than quantity

5. Success/failure
of an
organization
It is determined by the
change in trends
Computeritis:
Computers have a
major role (shut out
access to reality)
Promise of
effectiveness
Broadification:
Slight knowledge
of every field is
important
Can
effectiveness
be learned?
Know
thy
time
What can
one
contribute?
Productive
strength
First
things
first
Effective
decisions

6. Chapter 2: Know thy time
Effective
executives
do not start
out
planning
The 3
star
approach
• Recording time
• Managing time
• Consolidating
time
The 3
resource
s
• Time
• Capital
• People
Time is
The
scarcest
and
totally
irreplace
able

7. Effective Time Management
Disposal of time in large chunks
Take care of the Impact Time
Relationship formation with a knowledge worker is very time consuming
The span of control
Fast decision making often results in wrong decisions
Law of conservation of time

8. Systematic time management:
• Identification and elimination of
wastepaper basket activities
• Delegation
• Saving one from wasting others’
time
Pruning the time wasters:
• Seeking the recurrent crisis
• Overstaffing
• Mal-organization: Excess of
meetings
• Meetings: concession to
deficient organizations
• Information malfunction

9. Chapter 3
What Can I Contribute?
Direct results
Building of values and their reaffirmation
Building and developing people for tomorrow
More selfless approach towards the outside of the organization, towards
customers and results
Result oriented person is fairly more effective

10. Building And Developing People For
Tomorrow
Contribution helps to set a new level of highs not only for
the executive but also for all the people he works with
Most common failure: Unwillingness to change with the
demands of a new position
Higher the position of an executive, the larger will the
outside loom in his contribution
Biggest shortcoming is the inside focus on the company

11. Effective Executives Focus On
What the other fellow needs
What the other fellow sees
What the other fellow understands

12. The Effective Generalist
A specialist who can relate his own small area
to the universe of knowledge
Knowledge in more than one area does not
make one a generalist
The contribution of a particular specialist
should be presented in a form that is
understandable to his fellow specialist

13. Human Relations
1. Contribution in
their own work
2. Contribution in
relationships with
others
1. Warm feelings
2. Pleasant words

14. Human Relations
• Communication
• Team work
• Self-development
• Development of others
Four basic requirements
for effective human
relations
• An effective executive states at the outset of a meeting
the purpose and contribution it is to achieve
• The focus helps to create a team and propels the
executive to think outside of the organization
The effective meeting

15. Chapter 4
Making strength productive
3 available strengths in an organization:
Strength of
associates
Strength of the
superior
One’s own
strengths

16. Staffing From Strength
Seek strengths, maximize them
Staffing to ‘avoid’ weakness brings mediocrity
Strong people often have strong weaknesses too
Subordinates are paid to perform and not to please their superiors
Excellence in one major area is sought for
The very strong are better off working on their own
Seeking performance, not conformance
Stay aloof and build a team of great diversity and thus, strength

17. Reasons For Insistence On Impersonal
Jobs
1
• Human diversity (as dissent is needed for right decisions)
2
• Want of differences in temperament and personality
3
• Task focussed relationships (rather than personality focussed)
4
• Need of equity and impersonal fairness

18. 4 Rules For Effective Staffing
• Strength focussed
• Do not notify
weaknesses
• Judge the
character of a
person
• Measure
performance
• Man who is “good” for some one
task
• Two mediocrities < mediocrity
• Make every gamble a rational one
• Make the strength of every
subordinate as productive as
possible
• Big
• Demanding
• Challenging
• Have enough
scope
• Job is well designed
• If not, do not seek for genius.
Redesign the job
• Test of organization: Make
common people achieve
uncommon performance
Redesigning
of jobs
Don’t make
the job too
small
Appraisal
procedure
Look for
strengths,
put up with
weaknesses

19. Boss Management
Finding his strengths
Finding his ways of utilising these strengths
Finding his ways of contributing
Making the strengths and contributions effective

20. Ways to
become
effective
Keep the
leadership
performance
always high
Neglect
complaints
about the
inabilities, just
concentrate on
the strengths
Know yourself :
Your habits,
personality
traits and
temperament
Look upon
yourself and the
associates as an
opportunity
Try to be
yourself
Making Oneself Effective

21. Chapter 5
First Things First
Sloughing off the past
Periodic review of their and their associates’ work
programs
Get rid of all the inherited activities that have ceased to
produce results
Investments in managerial ego should be taken care of
(yesterday’s success)
Weight control: Sloughing off an old activity before
starting on a new one

22. Ways To Increase Effectiveness
The secret is concentration
Concentrate time, effort and resources
Doing one thing at a time
Expecting the unexpected
Allowing a time margin beyond what is actually required
Keeping an easy and steady pace

23. Hiring People
Bringing in fresh people with fresh points of view
New people hired to expand an already established activity
New is started with people of tested and proven strength
Systematic sloughing off of the old is the one and only way to
force the new

24. Decision making
2 factors are responsible for decision making:
1. The executive
2. The pressures
Leaving control of priorities could have 2
implications:
1. Important tasks will be sacrificed
2. Work of top management does not get done
Important features of
pressures
1. Always favour yesterday
2. Does not pay attention to the
outside
3. Always favour insides
4. Always favour crisis
5. Always favour the immediate
and visible
6. Always favour urgent
Priorities

25. Posteriorities
It is deciding what tasks not to tackle
Postpone=abandon
Taking up a project that one had earlier postponed is very disturbing
Risky: Ideas/tasks that have been relegated may turn out to be the opponent’s strengths
Every posteriority is somebody else’s top priority

26. Important Rules For Identifying Priorities
And Sloughing Off Posteriorities
Courage>intelligent analysis
Future>past
Opportunity>problem
New ways> orthodox ways
Take risks and aim high > safe and secure approach

27. Chapter 6
The elements of decision making
Focus on the quality and not the quantity of decisions
Focus on strategy and genius and not on “problem solving”
Speed not being a major concern
Know the underlying realities which a decision has to satisfy
Want impact rather than technique
Want to be sound rather than clever
Action should be simple and close to the working people

28. Learnings From The Case Studies
Productive research has to be the “disorganizer”
Problem tackling at the highest conceptual level of understanding
Decisions strategic rather than impulsive
Principle formation is a necessity
Innovation is a must
Profit earning should never be seen as a purpose of the organization

29. Elements Of The Decision Process
Finding true nature of the situation
Boundary conditions
The Right Compromise
Conversion to action
Feedback

30. Finding True Nature Of The Situation
4 types of situations
Virtually generic
Actually generic
Truly unique
New generic
2 common mistakes
Treating a generic situation
as series of unique events
Treating a unique event as
generic
Techniques of the effective executive
to make effective decisions
Assumes that problem is generic
Solves generic solutions through a rule and
policy
Finds a more general, comprehensive,
conceptual and principled approach
Does not make ‘many’ decisions
Tests for atypical and unusual happenings

31. Boundary conditions
Concise and clear
boundary
conditions lead to
effective
decisions
The most difficult
process
A decision that
satisfies two
different
boundary
conditions is a
prayer for miracle

32. THE RIGHT
COMPROMISE
Start out with what is right and not what is
acceptable
Two kinds of compromise:
Where boundary conditions are satisfies
Where boundary conditions are not satisfied
The things one worries about never happen. The
difficulties no one thought about suddenly turn
out to be almost insurmountable obstacles

33. Conversion To Action
• Reason attributed to the pertinence of a
step-wise procedure
Most time
consuming
process
• What action commitments are required
• What work assignments follow from it
• What people are available to carry it out
3 steps
necessary for
conversion:

34. Feedback
Feedback is required to provide a continuous testing
of the expectations that underlie the decision
To go and look for oneself is the only reliable feedback as
• Reports and figures are not a very reliable source
• The assumptions on which the decision had been made
need to be checked for their validity

35. Chapter 7: Effective Decisions
Features of an effective decision:
A judgement
A choice between alternatives
A clash of divergent opinions

36. Important Steps To Be Followed For Effective
Decisions
Encourage opinions, and not facts
Making a habit (in himself and subordinates) to voice an opinion
Finding out the criterion for relevance
Finding an appropriate measurement technique

37. Important Steps To Be Followed For Effective
Decisions (Conti.)
Organizing disagreements
Following the rule ‘To act or not to act’
Not permitting another study (in case of an mishap)
Not waiting too long to come to a conclusion
Coming up with disagreements

38. Basic Rule Of Decision Making Is ‘Not Making
A Decision Unless There Is Disagreement
3 reasons for insistence on disagreement
To save oneself from becoming a captive to the organization
Disagreements provide alternatives
Disagreement is required to stimulate imagination

39. Thank you!!