The Effective IT Executive

April 23, 2018 | Michael McGill | Leadership , Reading

See how Peter Drucker’s classic book, The Effective Executive, can help you become a better IT Leader.

Want to be come a more effective IT Executive or Leader? Want to learn how to make sure your time is spent delivering the highest value to your organization? Want to increase your value and influence within your organization? I would wager the answers are yes, yes, and yes. Read on to see how a 50 year old business book can help you learn key principles that will skyrocket your performance and make you a much more effective leader.

I recently had the pleasure and privilege to read Peter Drucker’s business classic, The Effective Executive. The book was recommended to me by a mentor and I have to admit I was hesitant at first to read it. I assumed that it was old, out-dated, and wouldn’t apply to today’s bushiness person, especially one whose focus is on technology. After all, as technologists, our focus is on the new and shiny, the latest and greatest, the modern. What could a business book written in 1967 possibly teach me about being a more effective leader?

Well…I was definitely wrong. The Effective Executive if full of timeless advice on how to become a more effective leader. The principles that Drucker lays out in this book can help not just any Executive, but any current or aspiring leader to step up their game in several critical areas. Even though the book is 50 years old, the wisdom within it is as timely today as it was back in 1967. The book may read a little dated in some of the terminology and references within it. But see past that and you will be rewarded with a wealth of practical advice on how to ramp up your effectiveness in several key areas.

First of all, I love how Drucker uses the word “Effective” vs. “Successful” (Stephen Covey does the same in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). The word “Effective” is concrete and tangible, whereas “Successful” can be vague and subjective. How do we know if we are Successful? There are so many different connotations and ways to measure success. To be “Effective”, however, is much more tangible. We can much more clearly define if we are effective and any given task or goal. It is more easily understood by others as well. My boss knows if I am effective at my job by the results I bring to the organization.

The good news here is that since Effectiveness can be easily defined, it can be achieved. Effectiveness is a habit; a series of practices that can be learned. So Effectiveness is not something we are born with, it is something that we can learn and continue to develop and get better at.

In the Effective Executive, Drucker lays out the 5 key practices that we can learn and follow to improve our effectiveness. Let’s take a closer look at each of these practices and see how they specifically apply to IT Leaders.

The Key Practices of Effective Executives

Effective Executives Know Where Their Time Goes

This practice in a nutshell: An effective Executive treats their time with what Drucker calls “‘tender loving care.” Time is the currency of effectiveness (and our lives); it must be measured and spent carefully. Drucker lays out a three-step process for becoming more effective with your time:

Recording Time-Record your time to better understand where it goes. It doesn’t matter what you use or how you record it; just go through the exercise of recording how your time is spent. Do it in real time, as your day is unfolding, not later in the day from memory. This is “time diagnosis” and helps you better understand where your time is being wasted. To track your time spent on your computer and online you can use a tool like RescueTime. As you are doing this ask yoruself, what can be eliminated completely, what can be delegated, how am I wasting other peoples time?
Managing Time-After you have measured your time, you now have a better idea of what your “time wasters” are. Now turn your sights to what time-wasters are a result of poor management These could be crisis that result from poor planning, an excess of meetings or meetings that run too long, or from a lack of or incorrect information.
Consolidating Time-This pertains to how we use our “discretionary” time; that is, the time that belongs to us, that we have control over how we use it. This is time that is available for the highest priority tasks that we have. We have to capture and corral our discretionary time to make sure it is put to the best use possible. We must consolidate our discretionary time into large chunks in order to get important things done.

What it Means to IT Leaders: Do you feel that your time is not being well spent, or you are struggling to spend time on high value, strategic work vs. busy work? Take the time to do a time study to really find out where your time is being spent. This can be a very eye opening activity that can help you identify your time-wasters. Once you have these time wasters identified start eliminating them. Find out which ones are bringing little to no value and stop doing them. Identify tasks that can be delegated by someone who could do it better. Delegation is also a great way to develop your staff. Now take control of your time and consciously set your day up to maximize your discretionary time to work on high priority items. Work better in the morning? Schedule your meetings for the afternoon so you can use the time you feel most productive and energized on your most critical projects. I personally use my Outlook Calendar to map out my time and projects for the day. I then print out my daily calendar and use it as a tool to make sure I am staying disciplined to my daily schedule. This is also a great tool for time measurement as you can jot down on the calendar what you were actually doing throughout the day.

Effective Executives Focus on Outward Contributions

This practice in a nutshell: Through this practice we identify and execute on the tasks and practices that lead to the greatest contributions we make to our organizations. We should be asking ourselves: “What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and results of the institution I serve?” We must identify the actions we take that have the greatest contribution and make sure our time is dedicated to those actions. In The 4 Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss has a great exercise to help us identify our most important tasks. Imagine you had an illness, or some other circumstance, that would only allow you to work one day a week, or even one half day. What would you focus on in that short time? Those are your most important tasks. Drucker lays it out in more detail and tells us we should focus on our contributions to:

Direct Results-These always come first and should be your top priority.
Building of Values and Their Reaffirmation-Effective executives make a commitment to, personify, and lead their teams in a way that supports the organization’s values.
Developing People for Tomorrow-Effective executives make it a priority to develop the leaders of tomorrow.

What it Means to IT Leaders: Is your time being spent on the tasks and actions that lead to the greatest contributions to your organization? Or is your day spent fire-fighting and performing tasks that have little value to the success of your company? Is your IT strategy aligned with your organization’s strategic plan? Are you taking time to develop your staff to be the leaders of the future? Take some time to sit down and ask yourself these questions. If you are confident your time is spent on the highest priority tasks that lead to the greatest contribution; good for you! If you come to the realization that you are not focusing on the right things; good. You have an opportunity for improvement. Do a time study and determine the tasks you are doing that can be eliminated and delegated. Create more discretionary time to dedicate to the tasks that bring the greatest contribution. You are a lion; hunt antelope, not mice.

Effective Executives Build on Strengths

This practice in a nutshell: Effective executives focus on building upon strengths, not weaknesses. In this practice Drucker teaches us strategies for building upon the strengths of our staff, our bosses, and ourselves.

Building the Strengths of our Staff — Make staffing and hiring decisions to maximize strength, not minimize weakness. We want to make sure we are building a staff of strong and effective people. We need to make sure that jobs in our organization are challenging and big to bring out he best in our people. Know your staff, their strengths and their weaknesses, and make sure you are capitalizing on their strengths instead of avoiding their weaknesses.
Managing Your Boss — There is nothing as conducive to our own success and growth within an organization that the success of our boss. If our boss is successful and promoted, opportunities open for us. So, know your boss and what their strengths are. Then work to make sure your boss can focus on their strengths by assisting with things that do not match up with their strengths.
Making Yourself Effective — The same as building on the strengths of our staff and our boss, we must build on our own strengths. What do we do well that others seem to struggle at? What do we struggle at that others seem to do well? Once you know the answers to these questions, the next step is easy. Focus on your strengths. It is much more effective to capitalize and build upon strengths then to try to improve your weaknesses.

What it Means to IT Leaders: Make sure you are hiring a great staff and you are committed to their continued development. Challenge your employees with stretch goals or projects to help bring out the best in them. Know your boss’ strengths and weaknesses. In most organizations, your boss may not be a great technologist. It is your job to deliver a superior technology solution and environment to your organization so your boss does not have to worry about this and they can focus on their areas of strength. Most importantly, be aggressively true to yourself and know your own strengths and weaknesses. Focus on your areas of strength and use your areas of weakness to help grow and develop your staff through delegation. Is your strength communication, understanding business need, and how to deliver technology solutions? Good, make sure your time is spent meeting with your fellow business leaders. Is your weakness understanding cybersecurity? Good, hire someone who is an expert or delegate cybersecurity to someone on your team to help them continue to develop. You get the picture.

Effective Executives Concentrate on the Few Major Areas Where Superior Performance Will Produce Outstanding Results

This practice in a nutshell: In this practice Drucker teaches us that one of the greatest secrets of effectiveness is “concentration.” By concentration he means concentration of your time and effort. As we focus on “upward contribution” and big picture goals, we need to create chunks of time in our day for focused effort on these goals. Once these chunks of time have been created we should put our efforts into a single critical task. Drucker was definitely not a fan of multi-tasking and recent research supports that multi-tasking is not an effective way to work. Drucker also recommends ruthlessly reviewing your current project list and cutting bait on projects or activities that do not produce anticipated results. This allows you to concentrate your efforts on successful projects or new projects that may produce future results. Drucker provides 5 guidelines for determining your priorities:

Pick the Future against the Past
Focus on opportunity rather than the problem.
Choose your own direction, rather than climbing on a bandwagon.
Aim high, for something that will make a difference.

What it Means to IT Leaders: Are you constantly in “fire-fighting” mode or managing crisis instead of focusing on your top priorities? If your answer is yes (and we have all been there), then you have some work to do here. Your focus should be on opportunity. Of course, as a leader you will be called on to help solve problems. But your time and efforts should not be spent on the “keeping the lights on” or firefighting. These types of items should be managed by your staff, delegate or outsource these tasks. ERP system selection or implementation, identifying a CRM solution, integrating with your customers and partners, implementing a Cloud based infrastructure, these are the big picture items you should be focusing your attention on. Create chunks of time in your day to put concentrated effort into these projects. It is a a discipline; you must aggressively defend your time against distractions and manage your day. Make sure that you are spending the majority of your time on the projects that move your organization forward. Remember what I referenced earlier about hunting antelope instead of hunting mice. Again, you are a lion, hunt antelope!

Effective Executives Make Effective Decisions

This practice in a nutshell: Decision making is only one of many tasks a leader has, and it only takes up a small amount of their time. However, decision making is specifically the task of a leader. Others make suggestions, but the leader makes decisions. Therefore, it is critical that decisions are made effectively. You must make sure you are using sound techniques to make decisions and not making decisions by the seat of your pants. And, fortunately, Drucker provides us with the key elements of effective decision making:

Is this a generic situation or an exception? Most situations that require a decision are what Drucker refers to as “generic.” Meaning, they are not a unique situation but rather a symptom of an underlying problem. Effective decision makers assume most problems are generic and a result of not following a policy or principle, they do not doctor the symptoms, they look for root cause.
Have clear specifications as to what the decision has to accomplish. These are known as “boundary conditions”; the conditions the decision has to satisfy to be effective. The more concise and clear the boundary conditions are, the more likely the decision will be effective.
Start with what is right instead of what is acceptable. You may need to make compromises on your decision, if you start with what is right then you will make the right compromises. Let’s say for example, my son tells me he wants to buy a motorcycle. I have a decision to make. What is right is that my son does not put his physical well-being at risk; that he stays safe. My decision may be: No, you cannot have a motorcycle. Compromise begins. In the end we come to the mutual agreement, through compromise, that he goes to a motorcycle safety course, only drives during the day, and always wears a helmet. The decision ended up different than what I originally thought was acceptable, but it still honors what was right about my original decision; my son’s safety.
You must convert the decision to action. No decision has truly been made unless it has been carried out. You must have effective communication and action plans to see a decision through.
Decisions have to be tested to be sure that expectations have been met. Drucker suggests Management by Walking Around here. Effective leader “go into the field” to make sure decisions are effectively being carried out instead of assuming.

What it Means to IT Leaders: Do you have your policies and processes in place? Do you have a security policy? Do you have a change policy? Do you have a defined process for managing projects and your helpdesk? I would imagine (and hope) the answers to all of these questions are yes. But more importantly, are you managing your team to honor and follow these policies and processes? If so, you will have fewer decisions to make on the day to day operational functions of your team because they will be operating within the boundary conditions you have set. Then when it does come time to make a decision, it will be easier to make because you, and everyone else on the team, knows the rules of engagement. Do not just assume that decisions you have made are being carried out as expected. Make sure you have assigned responsibilities ad get out on the floor, with your helpdesk, with your developers, to make sure decisions are being carried out.

In Conclusion

Whew…ok, so that is a lot to digest. But all of this boils down to two simple points:

The Executive’s job is to be effective.
Effectiveness can be learned.

Using the practices that Drucker lays out in The Effective Executive; we can build habits that help us better manage our time, focus on contributions, build on strengths, concentrate our efforts, and make more effective decisions. Who among us would not benefit from strengthening our performance in these key areas?

Being more effective increases our value and influence within the organization and opens the door for greater opportunities. Effectiveness, or greater effectiveness is achievable. You just have to follow the practices presented in The Effective Executive. I encourage all of my fellow IT Leaders to make the time in their lives to read this business classic to become more effective leaders.