No one in a managerial role should be allowed to manage others without having read at least one book from Peter Drucker. Drucker is widely acclaimed as The Father of Modern Management and published 39 books in a lifetame that spanned 95 years. The Effective Executive was published in 1967 and this book is as good a starting point as any for the uninitiated.Effectiveness is a habit and habits can be learned through practice, lots of it. According to Drucker there are five habits that, once acquir...

The Effective Executive – Peter E. DruckerBook Review for Goodreads.Originally published 1967. Edition read was Harper Business, 1993. I’m too young to have been part of the Drucker Generation. I had always heard him talked of and quoted among the staid and dusty corners of mainstream business, but I never thought to reach back and read him. Drucker’s words and ideas were the Esperanto of an emerging class in the business world of post WWII. He was part and parcel of important board room convers...

Adding this book to my list of must-reads for anyone working in corporate America. In brief:1. Know where your time goes; relentlessly prune unproductive activities.2. Know the contribution you're expected to make - to others' contributions and to the organization.3. Make your strengths productive and hone them; focus on the absence of weakness leads to mediocrity.4. There are always more opportunities available than time to pursue them – prioritize and focus on the truly impactful.5. Continuall...

DNF - I couldn’t get past the sexism once I realized it. It only refers to executives and leaders as men.

Stop reading boring blogs and books about productivity and go straight to the source of many of these ideas. Then, stop thinking about being productive and go do something.

A timeless Peter Drucker classic on time-tested aspects of strategy, planning, decision making, delegation, communicating, meeting management, and collaboration in being an effective executive. I like doing a periodic refresh of such books.

I'm pretty sure that if we'd ever met in real life I'd have punched Peter Drucker in the face. This book epitomises everything that I hate about productivity porn. It should be subtitled the definitive guide to squeezing every last drop of blood out of your workers.

I loved this book - so packed with wisdom that I moved through it slowly, filing away many quotes for reference.There are two main thoughts which might dissuade you from reading this. I don’t want you to miss out, so I’d like to address both:“Effective Executive? This sounds like it's only for people who wear suits and spend their days in board meetings..."The author defines executive broadly as someone who "is responsible for a contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organizati...

Good reminder of the basic fundamentals of time management.“The people who get nothing done often work a great deal harder. In the first place, they underestimate the time for any one task. They always expect that everything will go right. Yet, as every executive knows, nothing ever goes right. The unexpected always happens—the unexpected is indeed the only thing one can confidently expect.” “If there is any one 'secret' of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things...

Just like most of them, this book has too many words for 5 or so ideas. The conclusion at the very end sums everything up, so you don't have to read the whole book, just read the last few pages.

Know Thy Time - take a time inventory & eliminate "need not be done", "could be done by others", and "wasting other's time". - prune time wasters - lack of systems --> crisis - overstaffing --> unnecessary coordination - malorganization --> excessive mtgs - malfunction in information - consolidate discretionary time into meaningful chunks to facilitate effectiveness (eg 1.5 hr)What can I contribute? - in terms of EXTERNAL results - aim highMaking strengths productive - focus on indvidual STR...

I used to be a large reader of Jack Welch practices at GE, until I read that he looked to Drucker. I've been reading Drucker and re-reading Drucker ever since. He is the master at learning how to be "effective" and from him, I learned how to filter what are the best effectiveness 21st century leadership practices. Now, after 14 years of running a company and 8 years of trying to create a leadership engine to run a company, I believe that the 21st century practices for effectiveness in order of s...

I find Drucker to be really repetitive. There were quite a few sentences that didn't really add anything, and should have been taken out.

To be more effective, read an executive summary rather than the entire book.

"Don't tell me that you had a wonderful time reading this book, tell me what you are going to do differently on Monday". The higher up the organization, the less time he has under his own control (senior executives rarely have more than quarter of their time under their control), so you have to take control of your time. Understand what are the things that waste your time without contributing to effectiveness. Ask your subordinates how you are preventing them from doing their work effectively.Th...

The Effective Executive is filled with good advice. Peter Ducker predicts the importance of knowledge workers and recognizes that everyone will become an "executive" (as he defines it). The advice in this book is useful to most anyone working in a modern company.Alas, there are two problems with the book that stop me from full-heartedly recommending this book:* It's dated, and it shows. There's a lot of repetition and flowery language.* I've already read "The Effective Engineer" (one of my favor...

Don't know what's the hype about this book, it's simple common sense. Anyone who ever was in "meeting" knows its waste of time, why I should read book about that? The thing executives come in various shapes and sizes was mentioned in various other, earlier books. Management books are second after self help nonsense. Sad, no one over-hypes evidence or data based approaches...

I found this book out in the wild and, overcome by morbid curiosity, I decided to look into what the wannabe hustlers are fetishizing, and I am glad I did so. Oh, what a delightful bunch of boomer ideas! I can see how these ideas brought us to where we are today.I am sure that CEOs all across the world have this book on their night stand. I can also see freshly minted MBAs are swallowing heaps of this gobbledygook of a message on effectiveness and decision making. While the fantasy of a a steely...

A fantastic resource. Seminaries (often) do a phenomenal job of equipping people to be experts in the Word. Where most are weak is training church leaders to be time-managers, meeting-facilitators, action-planners, decision-makers, and priority-setters. These are all the products of general wisdom and stuff that can be learned from a wide variety of "secular" sources (see Proverbs). Peter Drucker's classic has literally changed the way I think about scheduling my time, choosing priorities, and t...

This is a short read, and not the most engaging one (it's not a page-turner by any means).But it is a classic, full of insights. It was written decades ago, but the advice is timeless.Great resource and food for thought for all the "knowledge workers" out there - which means most of us. Great books are not always fun. But they can be transformative. And that is the whole point. 5/5.