Key Messages
How To Become An Effective Executive For Corporate Success
As an employee within an organization, learning how to be an effective executive is one of the best skills that you can have.
Being an effective executive means being able to make decisions and stand by them, knowing when to delegate and when to use your own strengths, understanding that time is a precious resource and using it wisely, effectively communicating with your team and providing opportunities for their growth.
The Effective Executive book provides invaluable insight into these aspects.
These sections will help you understand why it’s important to ditch client dinners that waste your time; why hiring salespeople with other valuable skills would benefit your organization; and how taking your time over long decision-making meetings could save you even more.
Make sure that you learn all the tips offered in this book – they are essential if you want to become a successful leader within any organization!
How To Become An Effective Executive: Tune In To Yourself, Review Your Performance And Make Changes For Success
Effective executives understand that their work is an example to others, and they strive to excel in order to set a good example for the organization.
This means that it’s important for them to continuously improve their own skills because this will help them succeed in their job.
U.S.
President Harry Truman can be seen as a great example of an effective leader who made sure to stay up-to-date with changes in foreign policy and wasn’t afraid to take action.
By being attentive and modernizing his strategy, he was able to become one of the most effective presidents in American history.
Therefore as an executive, you need to focus on self-improvement if you want your organization to succeed and reach its full potential.
One way of doing this is by regularly reviewing performance; this review should cover both goals reached or missed and any fallacies in decision making such as bias or misconception that might have occurred at the time of decision making.
Additionally, pay attention to the areas where improvement is hard or impossible: knowing when you must ask for help can make all the difference.
Ultimately, leading by example requires hard work – but it goes a long way!
Stay motivated, take your learning process seriously and reap the rewards of success!
The Key To Effective Executives Is Optimal Communication In Team Settings
An effective executive knows that when it comes to measuring their performance, results are what matters most.
To be successful, they must plot a path towards their goals and work hard to achieve them.
This is particularly true for knowledge workers within an organization, who have to make informed decisions and have the responsibility of influencing the entire organization.
Since they often work with teams of other knowledge workers with different skill-sets, clear communication between them all is essential.
It’s not just about counting hours spent at the office either; effective executives understand that it’s about channeling their individual contributions into tangible results that can benefit the entire team.
At the end of the day, an effective executive has learnt how to maximize their performance, finding smart paths towards a greater outcome and being judged on those results – not just by quantity but also quality.
Effective Executives Balance Risks, Follow Through On Decisions, And Take Responsibility For Their Actions
As an executive, you have to make tough decisions and stand behind them, no matter what kind of criticism comes your way.
The decision making process starts with the most important question: is it actually worth it? You have to ask yourself if the probable outcome of the decision outweighs its risks and costs.
When it comes to boundary conditions or the conditions upon which you base your decision, think deeply about whether they still apply in the same manner – especially when times change rapidly.
For example, when Franklin D.
Roosevelt campaigned in 1933 for U.S president he chose to use a balanced budget but when this goal became unfeasible due to rapid economic changes, Roosevelt switched his policy and went for economic reform – proving himself as an effective decision maker.
Executing what you decide is equally as challenging as making a decision which requires courage and follow through on your part.
If a policy statement lacks action commitments then that’s down to you – as an executive- to define who is supposed to do what and be held accountable for each action.
More importantly, don’t forget that taking responsibility for whatever decision you make yourself is key regardless of any criticism coming your way!
How To Take Effective Decisions As An Executive: Constant Self-Reflection, Open-Mindedness, And Support For Others’ Professional Development
As an executive, it can be difficult to make decisions and know whether the path chosen is the right one.
In order to do this, it’s important to listen to other people’s opinions and compare them against your own.
Alternative viewpoints will help you be more open-minded when making decisions and hearing different perspectives can also be beneficial for your team’s professional development.
It’s also a commonly held misconception that successful organizations need only “the best” people, when in reality these organizations often focus on motivating their employees and helping them grow professionally.
Additionally, effective leaders are constantly evaluating their past performance by comparing results against expectations which can help inform future decision making.
The lack of a frequent review process, such as within political systems is frequently ineffectual compared to corporate or even military structured decision making processes which actively seek feedback in order to come up with better outcomes.
Former U.S.
President Dwight D.
Eisenhower exemplified this in the contrast of his approaches as general compared to president – taking action with regards to his ideas as general but having much of his words not lead directly into action while acting as president.
To make sure that you make the right decisions moving forward, listening to alternative viewpoints and learning from past outcomes should be an integral part of any evaluation process you put in place for yourself
Treasure Your Time: How To Make Wise Use Of The Most Precious Resource
Time is the most precious commodity we have, but too often it gets wasted on unnecessary activities.
It’s important that executives do whatever they can to cut out activities that kill time, such as too many meetings or outdated social obligations.
For example, one CEO was so used to spending her nights out with clients and colleagues that she didn’t realize how much of a waste of time it was.
After taking a step back and looking at the situation objectively, she realized there were other people who could take her place in those situations instead.
It’s also important to be selective about which meetings you attend.
Not every meeting needs everyone’s presence; make sure only relevant team members attend and that everyone has enough time to contribute in a meaningful way.
Finally, it’s important not to rush decisions; if you act too soon without fully understanding what is at stake, you may later have to go back and try a different approach.
In short, if you want to make the most of your time in an executive role, identify the useless activities that are draining away your precious resource and let those go.
That way, you can free up more time for the more important tasks.
Andrew Carnegie’s Legacy: Unlock Your Organization’s Potential By Harnessing People’s Strengths
If you want to build an effective and collaborative working environment, the key is to focus on the strengths of your employees.
As an executive, delegation can be a useful skill but it needs to be done in such a way that you’re tapping into the strengths of each individual.
Make sure that you are only delegating tasks to those who are better at it than you are, and make sure they have the time and resources needed.
You should also focus on what unique contributions you can make yourself to your organization; stay on task and use your skills to justify why your job is valuable.
To further enhance this working environment, find ways to cooperate with your boss and take proactive steps to improve your relationship.
As long as you do a great job so that there’s no need for them to spend extra time managing you, this will be highly beneficial for everyone involved.
By focusing on everyone’s strengths, from executives all the way down the chain of command, any weaknesses become irrelevant – leading to an overall effective working environment.
Remember Andrew Carnegie’s last wish before his death? He wanted these words carved onto his tombstone: “Here lies a man who knew how to bring into his service men better than he was himself” – by taking this advice, your organization will be sure make amazing progress!
Creating The Right Job Descriptions To Find Great Candidates And Achieve Amazing Results
When you’re looking for new talent for your organization, you can’t take shortcuts.
You need to make sure that the job description you write is not only clear, but also carefully thought out.
This means that rather than trying to find a single person with an unrealistic list of qualifications and requirements, you should be looking for someone who has the right set of skills and knowledge to fit the role.
For example, if you are searching for a salesperson and find someone who partially fits but has more coding skills than sales experience, don’t settle!
Even though this person may have rare coding skills, keep searching instead of rewriting the position so that it fits with their strengths.
Once you find the right candidate, make sure to stay true to the job description and provide sufficient support for the employee’s strengths and help them manage any weaknesses.
If you want to create amazing results, then look beyond focusing on just problems – these need to be taken care of – but it is dealing with opportunities which will ultimately produce great results.
So when hiring new talent make sure your job descriptions are clearly conceived and written thoughtfully in order to get the best candidates who meet all demands of the role.
Wrap Up
The Effective Executive book is concise and actionable.
It outlines the key message in a very straightforward way, letting readers know that by tuning into their strengths, improving upon areas for improvement and following principles for navigating within an organisation, they can become an effective executive.
To do this, they need to learn how to work effectively with others, create a cooperative working environment and support fellow employees in order to produce better results.
The book wraps up its advice by encouraging users to employ the practice of writing down their activities in a time diary.
This would let them identify how they use their time and how it could be used more productively.
All in all, The Effective Executive Book is an excellent read for anyone looking to become more effective at work.
