Summary about 'The Effective Executive'

Coaching

• Coaching is about connecting with people, inspiring them to do their best, and helping them to grow

• TODO

Positioning is everything

Executive-level influence - manages the organization’s existence and future

• you are mainly judged by your business judgment and enterprise-whide impace

  • Leadership: Position yourself as a system architect

    • Stop talking about what your team is doing and start talking about how the organization's structure, culture, or processes need to evolve to meet market shifts
    • executives don't want to hear about your 'wins'; they want to hear about your vision for the trade-offs. Every choice has a cost - identifying the 'right' cost to pay is executive leadership.

  • Management: The 'talent factory' positioning

    • executives are seens as Net Talent Exporters. Your repution should be: "If you want to grow, go work for". When you proactively move your best people into other departments to solve company-wide problems, you gain allies across the entire C-suite

  • Teamwork: peer-level 'organizational glue'

    • position yourself as the person who bridges the gap between silos. Solve a problem for a peer that doesn't benefit your department directly. This creates a 'debt of influence' that is more valuable than any budget line item.

  • Negotiation: The 'high-stakes' narrative

    • executives negotiate for capital allocation. You are 'investing' capital to mitigate a specific corporate risk or capture a specific market share
    • In executive negotiations, silence is a power tool.

Management - Managers manage people and processes

• Your positioning must shift from output (what I did) to Outcomes (what we achieved)

  • Lerdership: Shift from expert to coach

    • "what are the three ways you've considered fixing this, and which has the lowest risk?"

  • Management: Position your role as a clearer of path

    • "What is currently blocking you from finishing this by Friday?"
    • Your value is now measured by how fast you can remove those obstacles, not how fast

  • Teamwork: Managing 'up and out'

    • Position your team as a solution provider to other departments. If the marketing manager is struggling, offer your team's expertise to help them. This builds 'political capital' that you can spend later when your team needs a favor

  • Negotiation: Negotiating for resources, not just self

    • The risk: being afraid to ask for more (budget, headcount, time) because you want to seem 'low maintenance"
    • the blind spot: being low maintenance often means being overlooked. if you don't fight for your team's resources, the team loses morale
    • the pivot: negotiate using impact-based requests
      • "If we add one headcount, we can decrease our project turnaround time by 20%, which translates to $50K in saved overhead per quarter."

Peter F. Drucker guides on how to be executive self-management, so that we could "get the right things done"

to effect - get the right things done

• knowledge worker

  • 知识工作者的生产力, 就是“做好该做的事情”的能力, 也就是有效性
  • 无法对知识工作者进行严密和细致的督导, 只能协助他们
  • 知识工作者本人必须自己管理自己, 自觉地完成任务, 自觉地做出贡献, 自觉地追求工作效益
  • 知识工作者生产的是知识, 创意和信息

• 管理者 (knowledge worker or manager) - 促进机构有效运转并负有行动与决策责任的人

  • 不仅执行命令为满足, 他必须能做决策, 并承担起做出贡献的责任
  • 衡量知识工作主要应看其结果, 而不是机构的规模或者管理的繁简
  • 基于知识权威所做的决策, 与高级管理层做的决策具有相同性质

• 有效性

  • 使能力和知识资源能够产生更多更好成果的一种手段

善用自己的时间

• 一开始不着手工作, 往往从时间安排上着手

• 记录时间

  • 定期地了解自己的时间怎么消耗
  • 处理工作当时就加以记录
  • 连续三四个星期为一个时段记录

• 管理时间

  • 将非生产性的和浪费时间的活动找出来
  • 专注于对重要的事, 自己希望做的事, 已经承诺的事
  • 是否有助于成果 - ”如果不做, 会有什么后果?“
    • 审读对于组织,对他本人,或对于对方的组织有无贡献
    • 是否可由别人代为参加而不影响成果

• 统一安排真正属于自己可支配的时间

  • 组织越大, 用于维系组织运行, 而非用于发挥组织功能及生产的时间也一定越多
  • 很多例行工作
    • 次要事情, 身不由己的事情, 杂事
  • 集中一段真正属于自己的时间
    • 比如以 90 分钟为一个单元
  • 给一些重要活动定下必须完成的期限
    • 紧急事件
    • 非做不可

What can I contribute?

• 注重贡献, 注意对成果负责, 并将自己的工作与长远目标结合起来

  • 重视贡献才能使管理者注意力不为本身的专长, 所属部门所限, 才能看到整体绩效, 同时更重视外部世界

  • 贡献

    • direct results - 生存需要
    • value commitment and reaffirmation - 组织自己的主张和想法 - 维生素和矿物质
    • renew its human capital

  • 适应新职位而变, 适应不同价值观承诺而变

    • “如果做得好,能使本公司有所改变”

• 专业人员的成效

  • 肩负贡献的责任
    • 有责任让别人了解自己,进而使自己的工作有成效
    • 应该了解别人的需要,方向,理解, 以使别人能够应用他的成果

  • ask other people, the superiors, the subordinates, the colleagues

    • "what contribution from me do you require to make your contribution to the organziation?"
    • "when do you need this, how do you need it, and in what form?"

  • realte his narrow area to a genuine whole

    • learn enough of the needs, the directions, the limitations, and the perceptions of others to enable them to use his own work

• The right human relations - 建立在 “贡献”的基础上

  • communications - contribution in the own work

    • "what should we expect of you?"
    • "what is the best utilization of your knowledge and your ability?"
    • the superior has both the right and the responsibility to judge the validity of the proposed contribution
    • the more capable they are, the more willing to take responsibility

  • teamwork

    • "Who has to use my output for it to become effective?"

  • inside - resonsible for their own competence and for the standards of the work

  • outside - belonging to a functional specialty - task-focused

    • act as responsible members of a team with people with differ knowledge areas
    • orgainzed around the specific task on hand

  • self-development

    • “What is the most important contribution I can make to the performance?”
    • "what knowledge and skill do I have to acquire to make it"
    • "What Strengths do I have to put to work"
    • "What standards do I have to set myself?"

  • stimulate others to develop themselves

    • he sets standard which are not personal but grounded in the requirements of the task
    • he demands a good deal of himself

• 有效会议

  • 会前 想清楚会议的目的和要求达成的贡献
  • 让会议围绕主题

用人所长

• 选人

  • 用人是来做事, 而不是投人所好
    • “他能做些什么?”

  • 以一个人能做些什么为基础, 如何发挥人的长处

    • “他贡献了什么”

  • 管理者首要的任务在于 因事用人

    • 将管辖的职位设置合理
      • 不会设计一个“常人”不能胜任的职位

  • 职位涵盖要广 且具有挑战性

    • 对有才干的人的挑战
    • 可以把与任务有关的优势转化为确实的成果
    • 能使新人有发展机会
    • 该职位能够衡量他自己, 也应使他能衡量他组织

  • 以当事人的长处为重心,以当事人能做些什么开始

    • “此人能做些什么?” 为开始
  • 正直和诚实

• Manage your Boss

  • focus on the strengths of the boss and on what he can do
    • enable boss to do what he can do
      • "what can my boss do really well?"
      • "what does he need to know to use his strength?"
      • "what does he need to get from me to perform?"
    • know the boss has his own ways of being effective
      • either "readers" or "listeners"

• Make yourself effective

  • start out with the question "what can I do"
  • 了解自己的类型, 配合自己的习惯而行动
    • 顺应自己的个性特点,不勉强自己
    • 注意的事自己的绩效,自己的成果,从而发展自己的工作方式
  • 了解自己的性情
    • 了解自己能做些什么为基础,然后以最适合自己的方式做下去
  • 认识我们的下属, 观察上司, 多问“此人能做些什么”

• 管理者的任务

  • If leadership performance is high, the average will go up

  • easier to raise the performance of one leader, and set it into the standard-setting.

  • 找出有条件做出突出贡献, 并起带头作用的人才

    • 赋予他们领导人的地位
    • 安置到能“制定标准”并能创造成绩的位置上

  • 让每一个人的才智充分发挥

要事优先 - first things first

• 集中个人所以才能于一件要务上

• 一次只做好一件工作

• 摆脱昨天

  • 摆脱已经不再有价值的过去
  • 经常检讨过时和无效的计划
    • “这件事现在还有继续做的价值吗?”

• 确定优先次序

  • 重视机会, 不能只看到困难
  • 选择自己的方向, 而不盲从
  • 目标要高, 有新意, 不能只求安全和方便
    • 真正的成就,属于善于抓住机会选定课题的人
    • 成功的事业, 以开发新技术或开发新事业为宗旨

Decision-Making

• the effective decision

  • trackle a problem at the highest level of conceptual understanding
  • try to develop a principle for dealing with it
  • the action to carry it out is close to the working level and simple

• the elements of the decision process

  • find the true problem -> classify the situation - generic or an exception ?

  • define the specification and set Satisfy the boundary conditions -> 这个决策希望达成什么目标? 或满足什么需求?

    • the purpose of is ...

  • start out with what is right rather than what is acceptable precisely

    • one always has to compromise in the end

  • convert the decision into action

    • 谁该知道这个决策
    • 应该采取什么行动
    • 谁要采取那个行动
    • 行动的内容应该如何规划, 才能让必须采取行动的人胜任

  • feedback provide a continuous testing, against actual events

Effective Decisions

• think the specifications

• encourage opinions

  • they start out with an opinion not a fact

  • "What do we have to know to test the validity of this hypothesis?"

    • people who voice an opinion also take responsibility for defining what factual findings can be expected and should be looked for

  • "What is the criterion of relevance?"

    • go into find the appropriate measurement

• explore the alternatives

  • start out with the commitment to find out why people disagree

    • concerned first with understanding
    • conflicting views, the dialogure between diff view, the choice between diff judgments

  • develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about

    • the right decision demands adequate disagreement
    • disagreement alone can provide alternatives to a decision
    • disagreement is needed to stimulate the imagination -> a new and diff way of perceiving and understanding

  • use conflict of opinion as his tool to make sure all major aspects of an important matter are looked at carefully

• weigh the risks and gains

  • "Is a decision really necessary?"
  • act if benefits greatly outweigh cost and risk
  • act or do not act; but not half-action

• a decision requires courage as much as it requires judgment

  • "Is there any reason to believe that additional study will produce any new "
  • will not rush into a decision unless he is sure he understands it

• Executives are not paid for doing things they like to do

  • they are paied for getting the right things done

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