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

by Peter F. Drucker, Jim Collins (Foreword by), Zachary First (Afterword)

Overview

A handsome, commemorative edition of Peter F. Drucker’s timeless classic work on leadership and management, with a foreword by Jim Collins.

What makes an effective executive?

For decades, Peter F. Drucker was widely regarded as "the dean of this country’s business and management philosophers" (Wall Street Journal). In this concise and brilliant work, he looks to the most influential position in management—the executive.

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. Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that mold them into results.

Drucker identifies five practices essential to business effectiveness that can—and must—be mastered:

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

Ranging across the annals of business and government, Drucker demonstrates the distinctive skill of the executive and offers fresh insights into old and seemingly obvious business situations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062574343
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	01/24/2017
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	126,402
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Peter F. Drucker is considered the most influential management thinker ever. The author of more than twenty-five books, his ideas have had an enormous impact on shaping the modern corporation. Drucker passed away in 2005.

Jim Collins is a student and teacher of what makes great companies tick, and a Socratic advisor to leaders in the business and social sectors. Having invested more than a quarter-century in rigorous research, he has authored or coauthored six books that have sold in total more than 10 million copies worldwide. They include Good to Great, Built to Last, How the Mighty Fall, and Great by Choice.

Driven by a relentless curiosity, Jim began his research and teaching career on the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992. In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

In addition to his work in the business sector, Jim has a passion for learning and teaching in the social sectors, including education, healthcare, government, faith-based organizations, social ventures, and cause-driven nonprofits.

In 2012 and 2013, he had the honor to serve a two-year appointment as the Class of 1951 Chair for the Study of Leadership at the United States Military Academy at West Point. In 2017, Forbes selected Jim as one of the 100 Greatest Living Business Minds.

Jim has been an avid rock climber for more than forty years and has completed single-day ascents of El Capitan and Half Dome in Yosemite Valley.

Learn more about Jim and his concepts at his website, where you’ll find articles, videos, and useful tools. jimcollins.com

Table of Contents

Foreword: Ten Lessons I Learned from Peter Drucker vii

Preface xv

Introduction: What Makes an Effective Executive? xvii

1 Effectiveness Can Be Learned 1

2 Know Thy Time 26

3 What Can I Contribute? 58

4 Making Strength Productive 80

5 First Things First 111

6 The Elements of Decision-Making 126

7 Effective Decisions 160

Conclusion: Effectiveness Must Be Learned 185

Afterword: Don't Tell Me You Had a Wonderful Meeting with Me 195

Index 199