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.
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.
All organizations must be capable of change. We need concepts and measurements that give to other kinds of organizations what the market test and profitability yardstick give to business. Those tests and yardsticks will be quite different.
The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness.
If leaders are unable to slough off yesterday, to abandon yesterday, they simply will not be able to create tomorrow.
For every organization needs performance in three major areas: It needs direct results; building of values and their reaffirmation; and building and developing people for tomorrow.
Above all, disagreement is needed to stimulate the imagination. One may not need imagination to find the one right solution to a problem. But then this is of value only in mathematics. In all matters of true uncertainty such as the executive deals with – whether his sphere be political, economic, social, or military – one needs creative solutions which create a new situation. And this means that one needs imagination – a new and different way of perceiving and understanding.
An organization is not, like an animal, an end in itself, and successful by the mere act of perpetuating the species. An organization is an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makes to the outside environment.
Each member of the enterprise contributes something different, but they must all contribute toward a common goal.
The truly important events on the outside are not the trends. They are changes in the trends. These determine ultimately success or failure of an organization and its efforts. Such changes, however, have to be perceived; they cannot be counted, defined, or classified. The classifications still produce the expected figures – as they did for the Edsel. But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior.
Effective executives know that their subordinates are paid to perform and not to please their superiors. They know that it does not matter how many tantrums a prima donna throws as long as she brings in the customers.
In human affairs, the distance between the leaders and the average is a constant.
A decision is a judgment. It is a choice between alternatives. It is rarely a choice between right and wrong. It is at best a choice between “almost right” and “probably wrong” – but much more often a choice between two courses of action neither of which is provably more nearly right than the other.
Only productivity of the knowledge worker can make it possible for developed countries to maintain their high standard of living against the competition of low-wage, developing economies. So.
An organization, a social artifact, is very different from a biological organism. Yet it stands under the law that governs the structure and size of animals and plants: The surface goes up with the square of the radius, but the mass grows with the cube. The larger the animal becomes, the more resources have to be devoted to the mass and to the internal tasks, to circulation and information, to the nervous system, and so on.
An organization is not, like an animal, an end in itself, and successful by the mere act of perpetuating the species. An organization is an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makes to the outside environment. And yet the bigger and apparently more successful an organization gets to be, the more will inside events tend to engage the interests, the energies, and the abilities of the executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his real effectiveness in the outside.
Effective executives do not race. They set an easy pace but keep going steadily.
Decisions are made by men. Men are fallible; at their best their works do not last long. Even the best decision has a high probability of being wrong. Even the most effective one eventually becomes obsolete.
The truly important events on the outside are not the trends. They are changes in the trends.
Executives are not paid for doing things they like to do. They are paid for getting the right things done – most of all in their specific task, the making of effective decisions.