Appraisals—and the philosophy behind them—are far too much concerned with “potential.”
Effective executives usually work out their own unique form of performance appraisal. It starts out with a statement of the major contributions expected from a person in his past and present positions and a record of his performance against these goals. Then it asks four questions:
What has he [or she] done well?
What, therefore, is he likely to be able to do well?
What does he have to learn or to acquire to be able to get the full benefit from his strength?
If I had a son or daughter, would I be willing to have him or her work under this person? (a) If yes, why? (b) If no, why?
This appraisal actually takes a much more critical look at a person than the usual procedure does. But it focuses on strengths. Weaknesses are seen as limitations to the full use of strengths and to one’s own achievement, effectiveness, and accomplishment. The last question (b) is the only one that is not primarily concerned with strengths. Subordinates, especially bright, young, and ambitious ones, tend to mold themselves after a forceful boss. There is, therefore, nothing more corrupting and more destructive in an organization than a forceful but basically corrupt executive. Here, therefore, is the one area where weakness is a disqualification by itself rather than a limitation on performance capacity and strength.
The question “What should I contribute?” gives freedom because it gives responsibility.
The great majority of executives tend to focus downward. They are occupied with efforts rather than with results. They worry over what the organization and their superiors “owe” them and should do for them. And they are conscious above all of the authority they “should have.” As a result, they render themselves ineffectual. The effective executive focus on contribution. He looks up from his work and outward toward goals. He asks: “What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?” His stress is on responsibility.
The focus on contribution is the key to effectiveness: in a person’s own work—its content, its level, its standards, and its impacts; in his relations with others—his superiors, his associates, his subordinates; in his use of the tools of the executive such as meetings or reports. The focus on contribution turns the executive’s attention away from his own specialty, his own narrow skills, his own department, and toward the performance of the whole. It turns his attention to the outside, the only place where there are results.
All that effective executives have in common is the ability to get the right things done.
The effective executives I have seen differ widely in their temperaments and abilities, in what they do and how they do it, in their personalities, their knowledge, their interests—in fact, in almost everything that distinguishes human beings. But all effective executives I’ve known perform only necessary tasks and eliminate unnecessary ones.
Five practices have to be acquired to be effective.
Effective executives know where their time goes. They work systematically at managing the little of their time that can be brought under their control.
Effective executives build on strengths—theirs and others. They do not build on weaknesses.
Effective executives concentrate on superior performance where superior performance will produce outstanding results. They force themselves to stay within priorities.
Effective executives make effective decisions. They know that this is a system—the right steps in the right sequence. They know that to make decisions fast is to make the wrong decisions.
Whenever I have found a person who—no matter how great in intelligence, industry, imagination, or knowledge—fails to observe these practices, I have also found an executive deficient in effectiveness.
Effective executives know that one rarely overprunes.
The final step in time management is to consolidate the time that record and analysis show as normally available and under the executive’s control. To be effective every executive needs to be able to dispose of time in fairly large chunks. This is particularly true with respect to time spent working with people, which is, of course, a central task in the work of the executive. The manager who thinks that she can discuss the plans, direction, and performance of one of her subordinates in fifteen minutes is just deceiving herself.
There are a good many ways to consolidate time. Some people work at home one or more days a week. Other executives schedule all the operating work—the meetings, reviews, problem-sessions, and so on—for two days a week and set aside the mornings of the remaining days for consistent, continuing work on major issues. But the method by which one consolidates one’s discretionary time is far less important than the approach. Effective executives start out by estimating how much discretionary time they can realistically call their own. And if they find later that other matters encroach on this reserve, they scrutinize their record again and get rid of some more time demands from less-than-fully-productive activities.
All one has to do is to learn to say “no” if an activity contributes nothing.
The first step toward executive effectiveness is to record actual time-use. There are executives who keep such a time log themselves. Others have their secretaries do it for them. The important thing is that it gets done, and that the record is made in “real” time. A good many effective executives keep such a log continuously and look at it regularly every month. After each such sample, they rethink and rework their schedule. First one tries to identify and eliminate the things that need not be done at all, the things that are purely a waste of time without any results whatever. To find these time wasters, one asks of all activities in the time records: “What would happen if this were not done at all?” And if the answer is, “Nothing would happen,” then obviously the conclusion is to stop doing it.
“Know thyself,” the old prescription of wisdom, is almost impossibly difficult for mortal men. But everyone can follow the injunction “Know thy time” if one wants to, and be well on the road toward contribution and effectiveness.
Most discussions of the executive’s task start with the advice to plan one’s work. This sounds eminently plausible. The only thing wrong with it is that it rarely works. The plans always remain on paper, always remain good intentions. They seldom turn into achievement. Effective executives, in my observation, do not start with their tasks. They start with their time. And they do not start out with planning. They start by finding out where their time actually goes. Then they attempt to manage their time and to cut back unproductive demands on their time. Finally they consolidate their “discretionary” time into the largest possible continuing units. This three-step process
Management has to maintain the dynamic equilibrium between change and continuity.
My publisher in Japan, Diamond, recently publishes selected essays of mine, written over the last fifty years, under the title The Future Which Already Happened (The Ecological Vision, 1993). For this book, I wrote a kind of intellectual autobiography, which constitutes the last chapter of the book. In it, I record the beginning of my work more than sixty years ago, which was concerned with the balance between change and continuity. It was this concern that, ten years later, led me to the study of management. For I see in management, the specific organ of society that has to maintain the dynamic equilibrium between change and continuity, without which societies, organizations, and individuals perish.
One survives problems by making them irrelevant because of success.
Every surprise is something to be taken seriously. The entire reporting system kind of encourages the neglect of opportunities and surprise, but also it’s fairly easy to change. Fifty years ago, a friend and mentor of mine invented a system used in a big company that’s become very successful as a result. Every manager, down to the first-line supervisor, sits down every month and writes a letter with one subject: the unexpected. Not what went right or what went wrong, but the unexpected. And then they have a meeting and look at these things with the question: Does this tell us something? Now, the great majority don’t, the great majority are just anecdotes, but there are usually three or four that are relevant. And out of this, the company—a pharmaceutical company—has grown from a fairly unimportant commodity producer to one of the world’s leaders. And it’s come out of surprises, clinical surprises, like when a physician uses a medication for what it was not developed for and has amazing results. You have to focus on success, especially unexpected success, and run with it.
