Second, in order to be effective, how should managers manage their time?
Third, in order to be effective, how should managers make use of their own strengths and tolerate their own shortcomings?
Fourth, to be effective, how should managers make effective decisions?
Drucker was the first person to realize that knowledge economy was coming. In his works, he first proposed that the future society is a knowledge society, and future management is the management of knowledge workers. Especially in The Effective Manager, Drucker redefined the "manager". He put forward that managers are knowledge workers in organizations, and the primary task of managers is to manage themselves, that is, "everyone is a manager" and "everyone should be his own CEO".
You see, although Drucker wrote this book decades ago, and the cases he chose were also those in the era of industrial civilization, the problems he paid attention to were deeply humanistic, transcending the times and still being hot management issues. For the current managers, how to develop the potential of knowledge workers is still a difficult problem and challenge they face. Therefore, this book still has very important practical significance in this era.
After introducing the basic situation of this book, I will explain in detail how to become an effective manager from four aspects.
first part
Why is it a challenge for every manager to achieve fruitful results?
Drucker clearly pointed out at the beginning that management works are usually about how to manage others, but this book is about how managers should manage themselves in order to achieve fruitful results. It is very unreliable for an inefficient manager to manage others. Why is the effectiveness of managers a big problem in Drucker's view? This is about the writing background of this book.
This book was published in 1966. At that time, the American economy developed rapidly after World War II, and a number of large companies grew up. The number of managers has increased dramatically. However, these new managers lack corresponding knowledge and experience. They don't know what managers should do or how to be a good manager. They have been busy all day, but to no avail. In this case, Drucker first put forward the problem of managers' work efficiency, which is considered to be the key to the success or failure of an organization. If managers are inefficient, organizations cannot be efficient. This has become common sense today, but it was a great insight at that time.
Drucker pointed out that to be an effective manager, we must first understand two concepts, one is what is "effective" and the other is what is a real "manager".
Let me talk about what is "fruitful" first. In the first half of the 20th century, the industry pursued Taylor's "scientific management", and the focus of managers' work was to improve the production efficiency of manual workers. This management function is relatively easy, because the productivity of manual workers is well measured, such as how many pairs of shoes and clothes are produced a day, at a glance. But later, things were different. Knowledge workers are becoming more and more important in the organization, and their work results directly determine the performance of the organization.
For knowledge workers, there is obviously no way to evaluate them by measuring manual workers, because their task is not to do the right thing well, but to do the right thing creatively in order to make the work effective.
So how to measure the labor achievements of knowledge workers? Drucker further pointed out that the key to success lies in emphasizing contribution, which is the same for organizations and individuals. Organization is an organ of society. It must contribute to society and provide effective services, just as enterprises must serve customers, hospitals must serve patients and governments must serve citizens. Similarly, knowledge workers should also emphasize their contribution. Because knowledge workers produce knowledge and creativity, if they want to contribute, they must make these things available to others. This means that knowledge workers can't work behind closed doors, but should understand the needs of others and have the responsibility to let others know about their work. In short, the pursuit of practical results is to emphasize the contribution of work.
Having figured out what is "fruitful", let's take a look at what is a real "manager". Drucker pointed out that a manager is a knowledge worker first, and his work must contribute to the organization, which can substantially affect the management ability and performance of the organization. Conversely, to judge whether a knowledge worker is a manager, we should not look at his position, whether he has subordinates or even the complexity of his work, but whether his work will have a significant impact on the ability and performance of the organization. If the answer is yes, then even grass-roots employees are managers.
For example, in guerrilla warfare, every soldier must make an independent judgment on the situation, and the result of their actions will affect the victory or defeat of the whole war, so every soldier in guerrilla warfare is a manager. For another example, in the company laboratory, the research route chosen by a junior researcher may directly determine the future of the company. Of course, he is the manager. On the other hand, although the foreman of a factory orders dozens of workers, he is only a supervisor, not responsible for the work content and methods of his subordinates, which has no significant influence on the organization and operation, so the foreman is not a real manager.
Obviously, every manager should pursue fruitful results, but it is not an easy task to achieve fruitful results. Drucker said that in his 45-year consulting career, he had never met a "born" efficient manager. Even if a manager has a high level of intelligence and knowledge, it does not mean that he is effective. Sometimes, even on the contrary, talented people feel capable and don't know how to turn their talents into results, but they are the most inefficient.
Why is it difficult for managers to achieve fruitful results? Drucker believes that managers are "prisoners of the organization" to some extent in the organization. First of all, the manager's time often belongs to others, not to himself, and his work may be interrupted by others at any time, such as subordinates, bosses, customers, partners and so on. Secondly, managers are often forced to be busy with daily affairs, tired of dealing with some emergencies, and unable to think about what is really important. Thirdly, the results of managers' work must be absorbed and utilized by organizations in order to play an effective role, which means that managers must spend a lot of time communicating with superiors and other departments. Finally, managers often focus on the inside of the organization, thus ignoring the external world that the organization serves, and thus unable to provide effective services and contributions to the external world.
Drucker pointed out that all managers face the above four challenges, which is a fact that managers themselves cannot change. Because of this, every manager must consciously learn how to improve his effectiveness, otherwise it is impossible to achieve fruitful results. The good news is that effective learning is not difficult, and you don't need special talents and talents. As long as you master the correct methods, keep practicing and keep practicing, you can turn the pursuit of results into your own habits. In short, for managers, effectiveness can be learned and must be learned.
The above is the first point for you. Why is it a challenge for every manager to achieve fruitful results? The so-called effectiveness is to make the work produce tangible results and emphasize contributions. It can't seem busy on the surface, but it has no effect in fact. However, managers are in the organization, and it is easy to become prisoners of the organization, tired of dealing with daily affairs. They must learn the correct methods, and through continuous training and practice, they can expect to achieve fruitful results.
the second part
To be effective, how should managers manage their time?
As mentioned above, one of the main challenges faced by managers is that their time does not belong to them and may be squeezed and interrupted by various firms at any time. Moreover, the higher the position of managers in the organization, the more time the organization takes up. For example, people at the general manager level will generally participate in all kinds of entertainment, such as entertaining important customers and government officials, attending various public activities and so on. In this way, managers spend a lot of time on unpaid work.
Even more frightening is that few managers realize this. In fact, many people don't know how to allocate their time. For example, a chairman told Drucker that he spent 1/3 time discussing business, 1/3 receiving customers and 1/3 socializing. After listening to Drucker, he asked his secretary to record the actual time allocation of the chairman every day for the next six weeks. It turns out that the chairman spends most of his time on the daily scheduling of the company, such as calling in person to urge the goods. However, he believes that there is no time to discuss business, receive customers, participate in social activities and other important matters.
This is why Drucker said that if a manager can't "know yourself", he should at least "know your time" first. It is not difficult to do this, that is, to keep track of your time schedule. It should be noted that a job must be recorded immediately when it is handled, and it cannot be supplemented by memory afterwards, because human memory is very unreliable.
After recording the time allocation, the second step is to drastically cut down on activities that waste time. Managers can ask themselves which activities are completely unnecessary, which activities can be authorized to others, and which activities are wasting other people's time, such as calling everyone to a meeting at will. Drucker asserted that as long as every manager carefully reviews his time record, he will find that a lot of time is wasted on such unnecessary activities. For such activities, the cancellation of the cancellation and the authorization of the authorization are relatively easy to solve.
There is also a waste of time, which is caused by the management defects of the organization itself. For example, an organization always has the same "crisis" again and again, and managers are very busy just dealing with these crises. In fact, it is entirely possible to design a system to solve the crisis before it happens, so that managers don't have to be busy putting out fires every day.
For example, at the end of each fiscal year, the U.S. Department of Defense must try to digest all the budgets of that year, otherwise the unused part will be returned to the state treasury. At this time, the Ministry of National Defense is on the verge of exploding, and everyone is busy as a bee. Later, when the new Secretary of Defense McNamara took office, he found that there was a provision in American law that those necessary budgets that had not been used up could be transferred to a temporary account without having to be returned. This discovery makes the US Department of Defense no longer need to digest the budget in a tense way every year, but focus on more important things.
In this regard, Drucker concluded: "If a factory always has an orgasm and seems to be as busy as a bee, it must be mismanagement. A well-managed factory is always boring without any exciting events. Because all possible crises have long been foreseen, solutions have become routine work. " Zhang Ruimin, CEO of Haier, recalled that he was greatly shocked when he first read this passage. Zhang Ruimin later popularized the well-known "Nissin" working method. It is according to Drucker's insight that exceptional management has been turned into routine management, which has made Haier brilliant.
The waste of time caused by poor organization and management includes not only repeated crises, but also too many people, frequent meetings and poor information. However, even if the time waste of all the above links is solved, a manager's time is still quite limited. Especially for executives, the time they can really use freely generally only accounts for 1/4 of all working hours. If the working time of 1/4 is not centralized, but scattered fragmentation time, the result will be disastrous. This is because many important things require minimum continuous working hours. If it is less than this minimum time at a time, things will not be done well, the time spent will be wasted, and we will have to start all over again next time.
For example, writing an important report takes seven hours to complete the first draft. If you write 15 minutes once, twice a day, after two weeks, it will take seven hours, but I'm afraid I haven't written a few words at all. But if you can close the door, turn off your cell phone and concentrate on writing for seven hours in a row, you can come up with a good first draft. Similarly, if you discuss an important business with your subordinates, it will take at least an hour. If you only talk for 15 minutes, the effect will not be achieved at all. Important personnel decisions need more time. Effective managers are very cautious about personnel decisions, and often have to think deeply for several hours at a time and weigh them repeatedly before making a final decision.
Therefore, the third step of time management is to find a way to concentrate the fragmentation time and form the whole working time. There are many specific ways. For example, senior managers can work from home one day a week, or concentrate all their daily affairs on a few days to make other time. In short, if managers want to make greater achievements, they need longer time.
Finally, for the whole concentrated time, managers must make effective use of it and concentrate on doing only one thing at a time. This is the most important thing. This is the principle of "giving priority to major events". However, there are often several "important things" before managers. How to decide the order of handling these things? Here, Drucker gave two suggestions:
First, don't be busy with yesterday's task. Once some work is started, people tend to continue to finish it, even if it is worthless in the future, people don't want to give up. This is equivalent to the "sunk cost" in economics, and we should give up and terminate the task decisively. At the same time, people have a path dependence on yesterday's success. For example, some companies have achieved great success with a certain product, but this product is no longer suitable for future market demand. At this time, the company can't always think about how to maintain this product, but concentrate on developing new products.
Second, we can't decide our priorities according to the pressure. The most stressful and urgent things are not necessarily the most important, and the really important things, such as strategic thinking about the future and putting decisions into action, are not very urgent. If you set priorities according to stress, then these really important things will be put on hold. Experienced managers know that the so-called "wait" actually means "never do it".
The above is the first way to achieve fruitful results and do a good job in time management. First of all, you should keep a good record of your schedule, drastically cut off those activities that waste time and are of little significance, then try every means to concentrate the fragmented time to form a whole working time, and finally follow the principle of "giving priority to important things" and do only one thing at a time.
the third part
How should managers make use of people's strengths and tolerate people's shortcomings?
When it comes to employing people, managers can easily fall into such a misunderstanding: for important positions, they must find someone with outstanding abilities in all aspects, even perfect. For example, many management books say that a senior manager must have extraordinary analytical ability and decision-making ability, and must have superb interpersonal communication skills. He must also be good at mathematics, artistic accomplishment and creativity, and so on. In short, they are all-rounders. The problem is that such people are rare, and they can be met but not sought.
If we seek truth from facts and admit that it is impossible to find such a superman who is excellent in all aspects, then we have only two choices: one is a person whose advantages and disadvantages are equally outstanding, and the other is a person who is average in all aspects and can't pick out any major faults. What would you choose? Let's look at an example first.
During the American Civil War, President Lincoln's selection of generals was based on no major shortcomings. On the contrary, all the generals in the south under Li's command had shortcomings. What was the result? Lincoln's carefully selected "impeccable" generals were all beaten out of the water by General Lee's flawed generals. Later, Lincoln realized his mistake, pushed his way through the crowd and appointed General Grant as Commander-in-Chief. This is an expert with outstanding ability, but General Grant has one of his biggest shortcomings, which is drinking. In this regard, Lincoln said half jokingly, "If I know what kind of wine he likes, I should give him a few barrels for everyone to enjoy." Afterwards, Lincoln's employment decision was proved to be correct. After being ordered, General Grant lived up to expectations, won the key battle and turned the civil war around.
In fact, human development is inherently unbalanced. The more talented people are, the more shortcomings they often have. If only people who follow the rules and have no shortcomings are appointed, the whole organization will inevitably become mediocre. A good employment decision is to find people who can stand out in a certain aspect and give full play to this talent, instead of always staring at his shortcomings. In other words, managers should ask "what this person can do" rather than "what this person can't do" when employing people. The task of managers is not to change others and overcome their shortcomings, but to help everyone bring their personal strengths into play and help them achieve personal achievements.
In this regard, Drucker concluded: an organization can not rely on omnipotent genius to achieve performance, but only on skilled ordinary people. Only an organization that lets ordinary people do extraordinary things is a good organization.
An effective manager should not only give full play to the strengths of subordinates, but also learn to manage superiors and give full play to their strengths. Bosses are human beings, and they also have shortcomings and advantages. As a subordinate, don't complain that the boss is not doing enough, but try your best to help the boss give play to his strengths. Because you make full use of your boss's strengths, you can help yourself finish the work better. For example, your boss is good at communication. You can drag him to meet your own important customers. In addition, if the boss is not competent enough to be promoted, it is difficult for him to be promoted as a subordinate. Conversely, supervisors who are promoted quickly are also the most likely to succeed. So helping the boss is helping yourself.
Finally, managers should fully understand themselves and give full play to their strengths. Some people will easily complain about the boss and the company once their work is not smooth. Their time and talents are wasted in grievances and complaints. In fact, even if there are various restrictions, as long as a person really wants to be an official, he will certainly find ways to give full play to his strengths and make achievements. The most important thing is not to force yourself to do what you are not good at, but to do what you are most interested in and most handy according to your own nature.
The above is the second way to achieve fruitful results, using talents. Managers should find outstanding people in a certain field and give full play to his talents to help him succeed, instead of always staring at his shortcomings. We should not only give play to the strengths of subordinates, but also learn to manage superiors and give play to their strengths; At the same time, fully understand your own nature and give full play to your strengths.
part four
How should managers make effective decisions?
We usually think that a good manager must be busy making decisions every day. Is that so? Actually, it is not. Drucker said that effective managers don't make too many decisions, they only make a few important decisions. For managers, the most time-consuming thing is not the decision itself, but its implementation. If a decision cannot be implemented, it is not a real decision, but just a good intention. If a manager is only busy making decisions every day, but not implementing them, it can only show that he is an invalid person.
Therefore, in order to become an effective decision maker, the first question to ask is: Do you really need a decision? Making a decision is like surgery. There are risks in it. Surgeons will not operate on patients easily unless they have to. By the same token, don't make a decision easily unless you have to. Sometimes, maintaining the status quo is the best decision.
On the other hand, once a decision really needs to be made, managers must act decisively and make the right decision, instead of just doing half or compromising. It's like a tonsillectomy by a surgeon. If you decide that you must do it, you must do it thoroughly and get rid of it all, instead of doing half and leaving half.
Drucker particularly emphasized that when making decisions, don't always think about compromise. When he was doing management consulting for General Motors, Si Long, chairman and president of General Motors, told him, "My only request is that you write down what you think is right. You don't have to worry about our reaction or our differences. Above all, you don't have to compromise to make us accept your suggestion. You must tell us what is' correct' so that we can have a' correct compromise'. " Drucker said that Si Long's words can be used as the motto of every manager when making decisions.
In addition to the prudent decision-making and decisive action mentioned above, an effective decision-maker must also establish principled solutions to frequent events. This means that managers should not be piecemeal or satisfied with temporary solutions to recurring problems, but should seek solutions from a higher level and establish a set of principled rules and regulations. For example, the joints of pipes conveying steam in factories are often broken. At this time, the decision that managers should make is not to let people replace the joints regularly, but to send people to study whether the temperature and pressure of the equipment are too high and whether it is necessary to redesign the joints.
It should be emphasized that in addition to this obvious recurring event, there are some less obvious recurring events. For example, corporate mergers and acquisitions, although accidental for a company, are the norm in the industry. Another example is a catastrophic event. Although it happened for the first time, it was actually the beginning of a series of similar events. For this kind of incident, managers must also focus on a higher level and establish principled solutions so as not to fall into the state of making decisions every day.
In addition, decision makers should also pay attention to one point: when making decisions, there should not be only one alternative, but should be judged in more than two conflicting schemes. If you can see whether a plan is good or not at a glance, it is not a decision. Only each scheme has its own advantages and disadvantages, and it needs in-depth study to make a judgment, which is an effective decision. In fact, experienced managers, if they see that everyone unanimously supports a plan, will not adopt it immediately, but will deliberately stimulate negative opinions and fully consider both positive and negative opinions before making a decision.
For example, President Roosevelt of the United States, every time he encounters a major event, he always finds several assistants who usually disagree and says, "Please study a problem, but keep it secret." In this way, Roosevelt can collect different opinions and look at a problem from multiple angles. Just like a judge deciding a case, it is necessary to fully consider every piece of evidence and listen to the opinions of both the prosecution and the defense in order to find out the truth.
The above is the third way to achieve fruitful results and effective decision-making. Effective managers are not busy making decisions every day, but only make a few important decisions. Be bold when making a decision, don't just do half or compromise blindly. For recurring events, it is necessary to establish principled solutions. Effective decision-making also needs to make judgments among several conflicting alternatives and fully consider negative opinions.
First of all, it is a challenge for every manager to achieve fruitful results. The so-called fruitful, is to make the work produce tangible results, emphasizing contribution, rather than superficial busyness. However, managers in the organization are tired of dealing with daily affairs. They must learn the correct methods, and through continuous training and practice, they can expect to achieve fruitful results.
Second, effective managers should learn time management. First of all, you should keep a good record of your schedule, drastically cut off those activities that waste time and are of little significance, then try every means to concentrate the fragmented time to form a whole working time, and finally follow the principle of "giving priority to important things" and do only one thing at a time.
Third, effective managers should learn to make use of their own advantages. Managers should find outstanding people in a certain field and give full play to his talents to help him succeed, instead of always staring at his shortcomings. We should not only give play to the strengths of subordinates, but also learn to manage superiors and give play to their strengths; At the same time, fully understand your own nature and give full play to your strengths.
Fourth, effective managers should learn to make effective decisions. Effective managers are not busy making decisions every day, but only make a few important decisions. Be bold when making a decision, don't just do half or compromise blindly. For frequent incidents, it is necessary to establish a principled solution. Effective decision-making also needs to make judgments among several conflicting alternatives and fully consider negative opinions.
This book is a management masterpiece lasting for half a century, and many ideas in it have become management common sense, so that we "use it in our daily life without knowing it". Nevertheless, this book can bring us new gains. This is because Drucker did not simply tell us some "dry goods knowledge", but took us to a specific background and management scene, drew conclusions with rigorous analysis and plain language, and showed his thinking process to readers step by step.
Therefore, when reading Drucker's books, it is important to remember that some useful conclusions are only at the primary level. What is more important is to learn his way of thinking, his perspective beyond the times, and how he makes a keen judgment on social trends. As Drucker said in his book, "what really matters is not the trend itself, but the change of the trend." We also suggest that you read this book and apply the theory you have learned to practice to create more value.