What Makes A Good Executive

Peter Drucker says that being a good executive happens in three stages: getting the knowledge you need, converting this knowledge into effective action, and then ensuring that the whole organization feels responsible and accountable.

He says that the way to get the knowledge you need is to:

• Asking what needs to be done?
  
• Asking what is right for the enterprise?
  

Effective leaders find one priority (or two at the most) which are the most important at the time and focus on it. Then when they are done with that task they ask again what needs to be done instead of going right to the second task. Also effective executives focus on those tasks they are especially good at and delegate the rest. They also focus on the enterprise as a whole and not any one constituent or group.

The second stage is converting knowledge into effective actions. This includes:

• Develop Action Plans
  
• Take responsibility for decisions
  
• Take responsibility for communicating
  
• Focus on opportunities, not problems
  

Action plans create statements of intention, a way of checking results against expectations.