Does business advise from the 60's and 80's apply today?After reading Peter Drucker's classic "The Effective Executive" (1966) and "In Search of Excellence" (1982) - Thomas J Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr., I would answer "yes".
First a short review of the two books.
- Time Management: Record where your time goes (having someone else record your time is best). Are you satisfied that your time is being spent on essential and high impact activities? If not, find the time wasting activities and delegate or simply quit doing these activities.
- Focus on Contribution: Effective executives focus on results not effort. This point leads back to time management. Just because an executive is working long hours or dilligently, does not ensure he or she is adding significant value to the organization.
- Maximize Strenths: Rather than lamenting an employees mistakes and weaknesses, an effective executive appreciates this employees strengths and finds ways to utilize their strengths accordingly.
- Make a Decision: Effective executives are good at analyzing a problem and then taking decisive action. They do not fall into the analysis-paralysis trap. The worst mistake it inaction.
- Close to the Customer: The top performing company have a strong emphasis on listening to their customers in order to innovate and service their customers more effectively.
- Entreneurship: Excellent companies encourage, nurture, and champion innovation. Passionate employees with wild ideas are allowed to experiment and are not chastized or penalized if the project winds up failing.
- People Focused: Excellent companies treat their employees with respect and trust. Rigid controls and procedures are absent from these top performing companies.
- Value-Driven: The top companies have a guiding mission statement, often created by the original founder. The focus is on this mission over all else, including market valuation and profits.
For those looking for more modern version of these business concepts, I found some interesting similarities between these books and other best sellers.
Drucker's "Effective Manager" offers much of the time management ideas found in last year's best seller "4 Hour Workweek" by Tim Ferriss. "4 Hour Workweek" benefits from the fascinating accomplishments of Tim Ferriss.
"Built to Last" (1997) by James Collins and Jerry Porras is extrodinarily similar to "In Search of Excellence". Although Collins and Porras determined their list of excellent companies using a different technique than Peters and Waterman, the list of excellent companies overlapped closely. Both books have in depth profiles on IBM, 3M, and HP. The fact that "Built to Last" and "In Search of Excellence" came to similar conclussions on what makes a great company, lends further weight to the findings of both of these books. For the record, all 4 authors attended Stanford's MBA program. For someone who has not read either of these books, "Built to Last" is considerably more readable and memorable.
Technology, globalization, and communications have dramatically changed over the last 50 years, yet many business concepts remain constant. To turn a phrase, those who study history may learn to benefit from it.
Labels: 4 hour workweek, built to last, in search of excellence, peter drucker, robert waterman jr., the effective executive, thomas peters
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