The effective society starts with you
Drucker's The Effective Executive was one of my favorite books that I got into last year. I liked it because it makes sense to me and is filled with actionable items that I can try out. Whether my implementation of those practices will actually lead to their intended purpose remains to be seen long-term, but I'm a sucker for that kind of rhetoric.
I want to believe that effectiveness can be bred by example. This is the kind of dogma that podcast Manager Tools preaches: taking responsibility for not only your actions, but your team's; being frank about your perspective and the results of your actions, a straightforward toolkit to cutting out the subtext and making crystal clear policy. But the validity of that mindset is another post.
The point I want to get at is that if we accept that the behaviors of the leader propagate to his team, then the way we can build an effective company, and through it an effective society, is by example. Time management, evaluating on results, and focusing on strengths has to be done first by the hand and followed with the mouth. Unfortunately there is a mountain of doctrine and brain-washing we have to fight against to make this second nature.
The education system I was raised in was centered around repetition and rewarding effort, not results. This works for building confidence in youth, but without the right mix of teaching effectiveness it's nothing more than intellectual thumb-sucking. After years of knowing full well that time used needs to be applied to priorities and concrete goals, I still catch myself smiling happily every time I squeeze another five minutes of reading some book or finishing a tutorial while waiting for a train to arrive.
The message of The Effective Executive is the same as the lean movement: eliminating waste and directing resources in a manner proven to lead to the satisfaction of our goals. And this is something we need ingrain in every aspect of our professional lives, because until it becomes second nature to verify that what we're doing now is directly contributing to the greater purpose, it's absurd to expect that our directs are going to lead the charge (if that becomes the case then a change in roles is probably in order).
