If one cannot increase the supply of a resource, one must increase its yield. And effectiveness is the one tool to make the resources of ability and knowledge yield more and better results.

Knowledge work is not defined by quantity. Neither is knowledge work defined by its costs. Kn...

Brilliant men are often strikingly ineffectual; they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not by itself achievement.

They never have learned that insights become effective only through hard systematic work.

Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, ...

One can be an effective executive by:

• Recording where the time goes.
• Focusing your vision on contribution.
• Making your strengths productive and focus on using them.
• Prioritizing the most important things first, not necessarily the most urgent.
• Taking rat...

To ask, “What can I contribute?” is to look for the unused potential in the job. And what is considered excellent performance in a many positions is often but a pale shadow of the job’s full potential of contribution.

Every organization needs performance in three major areas: It ne...

• Effective executives do not start with their tasks. 
• They start with their time. 
• They do not start out with planning. 
• They start by finding out where their time actually goes. Then they attempt to manage their time and to cut back unproductive demands on their time....

1. Effective executives are time-oriented.
2. Effective executives focus on outward contribution and results rather than effort.
3. Effective executives build on strengths— their own strengths, the strengths of their ...

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously, he will fritter himself away simply“operating.” He may be excellent but is certain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away what little effectiveness he might have achieved....

• The first step toward executive effectiveness is therefore to record actual time-use.
• Systematic time management is therefore the next step.
• One has to find the nonproductive, time-wasting activities and get rid of them if one possibly can.
• This requires asking onesel...