John
Gehl and Suzanne Douglas produce a wonderful weekly e-mail summary of
the most important and interesting stories on innovation. Innovation
Weekly includes sections on
trends, strategies, and new products and services that reflect the
world's most innovative thinking. In this week's edition, the authors
do an astonishing job of extracting more from a short Forbes interview
with Peter Drucker than meets the eye. Their summary follows. Compare
it to the original
Forbes article and you'll see why I think Innovation
Weekly is such essential reading.
Drucker
on Leadership, by John Gehl & Suzanne Douglas
In this month's Forbes, the great management consultant Peter Drucker has a new round of advice
for leaders:
- Don't
start out asking, "What do I want to do?"-- instead ask "What needs to
be done?" and then ask "Of those things that
would make a difference, which are right for me?"
- Check
your actual performance against
your stated goals, and make continuous adjustments.
- Be
purpose-driven, and mission driven, and highly focused, so that you
avoid trying do a little bit of 25 things and getting nothing done.
- Learn
the art of "creative abandonment": Teach yourself to stop pouring
resources into things that have achieved their purpose.
- Don't
travel so much: Make people come to you.
- Develop
your priorities -- and don't have more than two. ("And when you are
finished with two jobs or reach the point where it's futile, make the
list again. Don't go back to
priority three. At that point, it's obsolete.")
- Make
your communications precise, and after a meeting write the participants
a two-page note saying "This is what I think we discussed. This
is what I think we decided. This is what I think you committed yourself
to within what time frame...What do you expect from me as you seek to
achieve your goals?"
- Don't count on your
charisma, count on your trustworthiness, the way Truman and Reagan did.
Truman "was as bland as a dead mackerel" but "everybody who worked for
him worshiped him because he was absolutely trustworthy. If Truman said
no, it was no, and if he said yes, it was yes. And he didn't say no to
one person and yes to the next one on the same issue."
[Pollard's two cents: What fascinates me about this list is that it's
less about leadership than it is about personal work habits, and
setting an example of personal productivity. This list is really for everyone, not just leaders, and it's really about Getting Things Done.]
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