Archive for the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ tag

The Effective Executive – Finished

Now that I’ve finished it, here are some more notes on The Effective Executive. A review will be coming shortly.

Organizing Your Time

I have been really thinking about how to implement these key elements in my own life. One of the first things I realized was in learning about my time, and as I wrote earlier, I worked on cutting out the unimportant parts of my life, and minimizing important but time consuming elements.  For example, I’ve reduced the number of times I check the blogs I read, to a couple times a day, so I don’t get interrupted as much. I can easily get distracted, and will always have to work on this I fear, but I think it is some thing I master.

Focusing on First Things First

I still have to work on making myself focused to work on the most important things to do. I look at my to do list, and notice 3 or 4 things which have been there for a few days, because they are important. But, instead of doing those things, I’ve worked on getting several smaller, but less important things done – if only so I could cross them off my list.

Making Effective Decisions

The last part I know I have to work on is making effective decisions. In the book, Drucker mentions two different stories. In both cases he talks about finding the effective outcome.

First, with the Cuban Missile Crisis Kennedy originally wanted inspectors on the ground to verify that the missiles had been removed. Something that Cuba and the Soviet Union wouldn’t allow. However, it turned out that spy aircraft with cameras could record the evidence well enough, so he could get the confirmation he needed, and compromise on the inspectors, as there was still an effective outcome.  It was an effective compromise.

The second story is with King Solomon. As the story goes, two women argued over who’s baby it was. Solomon ordered that the baby should be cut in half and one half given to each mother. The real mother knew that no baby was better than half a baby (in which he would be dead). In her case compromising wouldn’t have been truly effective. So she picked the most effective outcome, to let her child live, and thus identified who the real mother was.

I tend to make decisions and not like to compromise. I have to learn about when it is best to compromise, and over what. Something I see that many people need to do.