Business managers and leaders expanding organizational contributions

Peter Drucker: Effective Executive Guide

According to Peter Drucker, being an effective leader means getting things done. Intelligence and imagination are often present in great abundance amongst higher-level executives, but the ability to be efficacious in the world is rare (Drucker 1-2). While manual workers can be judged fairly easily on output, it can be struggle to quantify managerial efficacy. First and foremost, managers must understand this and not confuse efficacy with 'creativity.' Their actions must have a concrete, direct purpose, and if they do not understand this they will not be successful leaders. For Drucker, success is not something undefined and elusive. It is meeting the goals set for the organization, and ensuring one's actions enable the organization to thrive.

The proliferation of professionals and knowledge-based workers is the source of much of the red tape that prevents things from 'getting done.' Too many workers have knowledge, but lack the ability and awareness of how to use that knowledge. It is the task of the leader to channel the organization made up of disparate actors into meeting its singular goal. Setting concrete benchmarks and conveying this sense of efficacy through one's managerial style is tremendously motivational to workers. If leaders can create a structure where expectations are clear and goal-oriented, productivity will increase (Drucker 5). Successful leaders ask what needs to be done; articulate benchmarks to measure their performance and the performance of others; have a sense of mission to meet those benchmarks, and delegate what they cannot perform themselves (Karlgaard 2004).

Drucker's view of the organization is quite hierarchical -- leadership and direction is something supervisors do 'to' their subordinates. Other views of leadership have similarly stressed the need for a sense of a common vision for all organizational actors, but have taken a more participatory view. Drucker viewed the leader as setting the mission and the agenda for the organization, while in participatory views of management, there is a dialogue between different levels of the hierarchy, as committed participants can offer their insights about the needs of the organization. "Participatory management means that staff, not only the designated managers, have input and influence over the decisions that affect the organization. It is not the same as communal or co-operative management, where every staff member has the same weight in the decision-making process" (Bartle 2012). To some extent, Drucker anticipated this movement, given that he noted that organizations were made up of increasing numbers of persons who were knowledge-based professionals and thus were charged with directing, not merely following orders. But participatory management stresses that everyone has a contribution to make that can facilitate getting things done within the organization, not simply white-collar workers.