“What makes an effective executive” by Peter Drucker

By Rajesh Setty on Sun 16 Apr 2006, 7:32 PM – Leave Comment

When I was a kid, I had four people other students with the same name –

Rajesh. So most of my teachers and friends called me by my initials – CP. This is a very common name in India.

Now, I have many friends with the name Navin (in variety of spellings.)

I was talking about this Jnan Dash over lunch two days ago and he said

– “You should be happy. Navin means ‘New’ and you have a lot of new

things in your life.” Yes, I am happy about all my friends and that was

a nice way of looking at things.

This one comes from Navin Nagiah (CEO of CIGNEX)and now a blogger at OpenLogue. You can read his views on open source and other business issues over there.

Over

the last 65 years of my consulting career, I found no stereotypical

leaders. They were all over the may in terms of their

personalities, attitudes, values, strengths, and weaknesses. The

ranged from extroverted to nearly reclusive, from easy-going to

controlling, from generous to parsimonious.

What made them all effective is that they followed the same eight practices:

1. They asked, “What needs to be done?”

2. They asked, “What is right for the Enterprise?”

3. They developed action plans

4. They took responsibility for decisions.

5. They took responsibility for communicating.

6. They were focused on opportunities rather than problems.

7. They ran productive meetings.

8. They thought and said “we” rather than “I”.

One other final best practice … “Listen first, speak last.”

Related Articles:

Posted in the Leadership, Main Page category.