The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Harperbusiness Essentials)

Such a man (or woman) must make decisions; he cannot just carry out orders.

The fundamental problem is the reality around the executive. Unless he changes it by deliberate action, the flow of events will determine what he is concerned with and what he does.

1. Effective executives know where their time goes.

5. Effective executives, finally, make effective decisions. They know that this is, above all, a matter of system—of the right steps in the right sequence.

4. Effective executives concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results.

Management literature has long known the theorem of “the span of control,” which asserts that one man can manage only a few people if these people have to come together in their own work (that is, for instance, an accountant, a sales manager, and a manufacturing man, all three of whom have to work with each other to get any results).

The fewer people, the smaller, the less activity inside, the more nearly perfect is the organization in terms of its only reason for existence: the service to the environment.

the executive is, first of all, expected to get the right things done.

People-decisions are time-consuming, for the simple reason that the Lord did not create people as “resources” for organization.