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"What should we at the head of this organization know about your work?
What do you want to tell me regarding this orngainzation?
Where do you see opportunities we do not exploit?
Where do you see dangers to which we are still blind?
And all together, what do you want to know from me about the organization?
Effective executives have learned to ask systematically and without coyness: "What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness?" To ask this question, and to ask it without being afraid of the truth, is a mark of the effective executive.
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"My secretary has strict instructions not to put anyone through except the President of the United States and my wife. The President rarely calls - and my wife knows better. Everything else the secretary holds till I have finished. Then I have half an hour in which I return every call and make sure I get every message. I have yet to come across a crisis which could not wait 90 minutes."
When he suddenly found himself president, he asked himself: "What can I and no one else do which, if done really well, would make a real difference to this company?"
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The man who asks of himself, "What is the most important contribution I can make to the performance of this organization?" asks in effect, "What self-development do I need? What knowledge and skill do I have to acquire to make the contribution I should be making? What strengths do I have to put to work? What standards do I have to set myself?"
He always, at the end of his meetings, goes back to the opening statement and relates the final conclusions to the original intent.
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Effective executives usually work out their own radically different form. It starts out with a statement of the major contributions expected from a man in his past and present positions and a record of his performance against these goals. Then it asks 4 questions:
(a) "What has he done well?"
(b) "What, therefore, is he likely to be able to do well?"
(c) "What does he have to learn or to acquire to be able to get the full benefit from his strength?"
(d) "If I had a son or daughter, would I be willing to have him or her work under this person?"
(i) "If yes, why?" (ii) "If no, why?"
(The effective executive asks: "What can my boss do really well?" "What has he done really well?" "What does he need to know to use his strength?" "What does he need to get from me to perform?" He does not worry too much over what the boss cannot do.
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The first question the effective decision-maker asks is: "Is this a generic situation or an exception?" "Is this something that underlies a great many occurrences? Or is the occurrence a unique event that needs to be dealt with as such?" The generic always has to be answered through a rule, a principle. The exceptional can only be handled as such and as it comes.
"I had to live with this for a long time, would I be willing to?" And if the answer is "No," he keeps on working to find a more general, a more conceptual, a more comprehensive solution - on which establishes the right principle.
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The second major element in the decision process is clear specifications as to what the decision has to accomplish. What are the objectives the decision has to reach? What are the minimum goals it has to attain? What are the conditions it has to satisfy? In science these are known as "boundary conditions." A decision, to be effective, needs to satisfy the boundary conditions. It needs to be adequate to its purpose.
Converting a decision into action requires answering several distinct questions: Who has to know of this decision? What actions has to be taken? Who is to take it? And what does the action have to be so that the people who have to do it can do it? The first and the last of these are too often overlooked - with dire results.
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The effective executive encourages opinions. But he insists that the people who voice them also think through what it is that the "experiment" - that is, the testing of the opinion against reality - would have to show. The effective executive, therefore, asks: "What do we have to know to test the validity of this hypothesis?" "What would the facts have to be to make this opinion tenable?"
The knowledge worker demands economic rewards too. Their absence is a deterrent. But their presence is not enough. He needs opportunity, he needs achievement, he needs fulfillment, he needs values.
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