The WSJ periodically publishes a “Five Best” article reviewing the best books in a particular category. A recent one addressed business books, and at the top of the list was this one by Peter Drucker. Interestingly, two of the other four books, strictly speaking, aren’t about management at all - one is about sales, and the other about advertising. Of the remaining two, one is from the unfortunate school of comparisons with historical personages (in this case, Machiavelli), and the other is Lou Gerstner’s story of how he resurrected IBM, and in the telling of this story he is plainly dismissive of much of what is currently taught about management. As a group, the selection is a stern rebuke to the slew of trivialities masquerading as general management books today (see here for a take on this from The Economist).
Just as clearly, the one book on the list that is an absolute must read for every manager is Drucker’s The Effective Executive. You will be pleased to note that it fills only about 150 pages, considerably less than the 800+ in his Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices reviewed last week. But if your entire business education consists in a liberal arts bachelor’s degree together with a deliberate and carefully considered reading of these 150 pages alone, you will likely outperform your peers with the most fashionably cobbled-together MBAs.
“The Effective Executive” is a brilliant distillation of Drucker’s incisively objective thinking about his study and observations of management, managers, and organizations around the world and since the rise of the organization as a primary building block of modern society. He describes the duties and professional outlook of the manager, and the practical things he or she must master or gain control over in order to be effective. From time management to decision-making skills, Drucker both establishes the indisputably fundamental requirements that lead to effectiveness in managers and debunks the ivory-tower irrelevancies that distract and dilute that effectiveness.
Those of you who have read Mary Parker Follett will find much of her work in this book - particularly regarding the importance of creative dissent and conflict in the decision making process. Also like her, Drucker emphasizes that the manager’s core value comes not from extraordinary personal characteristics, but rather from habits and practices originating in the work of the organization, and which can be learned by any reasonably competent person.
One important way you can show your own competence is to read this book. Exercise the discipline undoubtedly required to truly test and understand its tenets, and to develop into an effective executive, yourself. Practiced and cultivated over a lifetime, they will help you find your effectiveness in your professional habits; any extraordinariness will ultimately reveal itself not in you, but where it belongs: in your results.
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