Tag Archives: leader

Management Skills for the Effective Manager – Drucker’s The Effective Executive – 1

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Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive

Learning how to be an effective manager is a primary task for every manager. However, most managers learn management skills on the job  without guidance and in a haphazard fashion. A few companies have formal mentoring programs but, of these, few have a structured approach. Very few courses are offered in business schools on how to be an effective manager. To the extent that a manager becomes an effective manager, it is learned by stumbling about and reinventing the wheel.

Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive: the definitive guide to getting the right things done  (( I am using the 2006 edition published by Harper Collins. I will also refer to The Effective Executive in Action by Drucker and J. A. Maciariello published by Harper Collins, 2006)) has been a continuing resource for me in learning how to be an effective manager and teaching others these management skills . I find myself re-reading it in parts and all of it every year. To spread the wisdom around and reflect further on this guide for the general manager ((I use the word “manager” throughout in place of “executive” because I believe that Drucker’s ideas scale up and down the management hierarchy very well. These are lessons for everyone one from front line supervisor to CEO)) I will devote a series of postings here to its content on how to be an effective manager. Continue reading →

Leadership – “bringing people around softly” and speaking last

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The other day I was talking with a business owner about her people management practices. In comparing some thoughts about how to effectively supervise people she noted that waving your finger and giving instructions was almost always a non-starter. She said that she thought that “people need to be brought around softly”. Continue reading →

Meetings – The Drama Model

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Third in a series on meetings.

Think of meetings as dramas. Meetings should follow the basic shape of almost all dramas and movies. Act One sets the scene and hooks us into the action, introduces the characters, tells us what the drama is about, provides us with all of the information that allows us to participate. The Act Two is conflict. Discussions break out, issues parsed, pruned, and analyzed. The Act Three is resolution. The culprit gets his comeuppance, the love interest is played out, and so on.

In the world of organizations, the resolution, Act Three,  is usually a set of tasks.  Those accountable are clearly noted, deadlines set, resources committed, metrics for success defined, and the date for follow-up put on the calendar.

In a business drama, every formal meeting needs to have an objective, an agenda, time, place, leader, and participants. All of this must be made available to everyone involved before the meeting takes place. This provides the participants with time to review the agenda, gather information, think about the problem, in short, get ready to participate and not just appear at the meeting.

The leader of a meeting needs to think through each act. A key element of Act One is the hook. Everyone must understand very early in the meeting that something significant is at stake. This draws them into the meeting and gets them ready to participate vigorously.

Once you have applied this dramatic model to your formal meetings, think about how you can apply this to the informal meetings. Frequently, in contrast to formal meetings where Act One is critical, informal meetings fall down on Act Three, the resolution. How often do you walk away from a casual conversation about a project problem and wonder “What was that about and who is really responsible for bringing closure to the problem?”