My summary notes: Intro: The effective executive manages and leads himself first. Systems, rules, delegation, leadership. The knowledge worker produces ideas and information that someone else has to act on. Working on the right things. Knowledge work is defined by its results. Four realities: The executive’s time belongs to everybody else. Executives are forced to keep operating (i.e. not strategising) unless he changes the reality in which he works. Changes the work flow. He’s in an organisation reliant on other people to make use of what he contributes. The results are outside the organisation. Unless executives work at becoming effective, the realities of their situation will push them into futility. Five practices: Time management Results oriented Building strengths Concentrate on a few major areas Make the right important decisions Don’t start with tasks. Start with time and allocate it. In … Read More
What are you actually doing right now?
What are you actually doing right now? A few days ago I was playing on the back deck with my daughter, just stacking toys and pointlessly moving buckets around. As I was doing this I thought ‘I really should be doing something more productive’. And then the question came to me. Why do we feel so guilty when we’re not doing something that can be immediately quantified? I think it’s because we love to immediately measure how we’re spending time. And the easiest way to measure it is by the improvement we see straight away, or the financial reward we get for what we’re doing. It’s a real struggle to measure our time in other ways, but it’s a very important exercise to go through. We first have to start with what our priorities are. For me it’s my … Read More