#190: How To Be Effective/Lessons from Peter Drucker

I apologise.

I know that all effective conversations have four components – establishing relationship, deepening understanding, exploring possibilities, and agreeing action.

Last week, I ignored this. It was a month since I’d written to you, and I felt pressured (my issue, not yours) to show that this letter (and me) was useful, worthy of your time.

I went straight to action, spending no time connecting.

It’s a trap we all fall into. There is so much to be done, there’s no time, we just want to get going. It almost always has long-term costs.

Master coach James Flaherty, in Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others, reminds us, “The next time you’re in a conversation for action that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere… consider whether enough depth of relationship is in place and enough possibilities have been explored to give a foundation for the current conversation to go forward.”

Here’s a little about my last five weeks, I’d love to hear about yours…

The final weeks of last year were somewhat biblical in our new home of Simons Town. As so often happens in this part of the world, the surrounding mountains exploded into flame and burnt for days on end. Warnings were issued, bags were packed, the town waited and baboons perched like pigeons on Main Street balconies, whilst brave men and women battled that most beautiful of elements.

At night we watched, part anxious, part seduced, as flames caressed their way over the rocky ground above us. When they found their way back to dense bush, the cautious creeper transformed into a towering Prometheus, the allure evaporating, leaving only fear.

We watched amazed as helicopter pilots held their craft steady against the surge of the South Atlantic, filling massive containers with thousands of seawater litres to dampen the fires. In the mountains, fighters faced flames on foot.

In a moment, that I’ve not yet been able to process, the local councilor thanked multiple volunteer organisations. On his list was a team from Ocean View. When the apartheid state robbed people of their Simons Town homes, Ocean View was born. And here they were.

Alongside this, we discovered Talking to Strangers. If you love cocktails, you’ll love it. If you don’t, they’ll convert you. If alcohol isn’t your thing, they’ve got something for you.

The late 90s/early 2000s duo of Masauko Chipembere and Neo Muyanga, Blk Sonshine staged a long-awaited reunion tour.  We went.

A friend once described Muyanga as a mischievous, slightly tipsy, Yoda. Together Chipembere and Muyanga channeled Pan and Anansi. Life-giving, irreverent, and playful, they were alchemists of Pan-African power and prankster-gods’ magic.  

They shared their stage with gifted guests who had been pulled away from their artistry by life’s hardship, performers who started tentatively and then remembered who they were before their experiences. As they reconnected with remembered themselves, their joy at how good they were, was delightfully visible. I think they lay in bed that night, maybe tinged with regret’s grey, and also pride’s hope, hearts trippy-happy, fingers and toes tingling. Alive. Smiling. Ready to dream.  

There was a lot else … it will have to wait… we have got understanding to deepen and possibilities to explore.

/strategy and //self

To start the year, I revisited Peter Drucker’s 1967 classic, The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done.

Today, we explore Chapter Two ‘Know Thy Time’.

Time is a curious thing. In one sense, it’s fixed, one hundred and sixty-eight hours a week. In another sense, entirely elastic.

Gaze into a loved one’s eyes, or confront a fat puff adder, time slows and stretches. Pick up an app-laden phone, time leaks away, leaving toxic sludge. Do something you love, time flies by and your bunny ears are up. Find a baboon in the kitchen munching your fruit (as happened last week) and it moves both fast and slow.

Drucker says “Everything requires time. It is the one truly universal condition. All work takes place in time and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable, and necessary resource. Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executive as their tender loving care of time”.

How we use time determines how effective we and our businesses are, as Drucker puts it “unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed”.

One of my favourite thought experiments is this; ask your executive team to detail how they’ve spent their last month. Once you’ve got the full list of activities ask, “Based on how we spend time, what kind of business/department would we say we’re in?”  

Drucker is a realist. He knows that most executives’ time isn’t under their control. He estimates that, at best, they have a quarter of their time available.

He emphasises two principles:

• Organisations, the people, and the decisions needed are complex. Complexity requires concentrated blocks of time to develop sufficient understanding. How often don’t you find yourself trying to make a decision that will influence the next decade of your business or your life in just thirty minutes?
• Fragments of time are meaningless. He writes, “The manager who thinks that they can discuss the plans, direction, and performance of one of his subordinates in fifteen minutes is just deceiving themselves. If one wants to get to the point of having an impact, one needs probably at least an hour and usually much more. And, if one has to establish a human relationship, one needs infinitely more time”.  

How then to get to the point where you’ve got time?

Drucker suggests eight steps. These are six of them:

1. Log all your time. If you’re lucky enough to have an assistant, ask them to also do it for you and compare the two results. They’ll often give you a more honest view than you’d give yourself.
2. Identify and eliminate all the things that are time wasters by asking “What would happen if this weren’t done?” (Read more in The Best Entrepreneurs? They Let Fires Burn)
3. Identify what you’re doing that could be done as well by someone else. Hand it over.
4. Ask others “What do I do that wastes your time without adding to your effectiveness?”
5. Identify recurrent crises that point to process or systems failures. Drucker is brutal, “The recurrent crisis is simply a symptom of slovenliness and laziness”.
6. Assess whether meetings have the appropriate information in the appropriate form to enable decision-making. For example, I have found building a detailed picture of historical sales patterns before any sales strategy session immediately unlocks performance. Conversely, meetings without that context quickly descend into blame and defensiveness.

(Make Your Time Count gives you more on this topic)

/// soul

This came via Tim Ferriss’ Five Bullet Friday.

“The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours” (Amos Tversky).

Of course, to waste hours, you need to have created the space to do so… get started on that time log.

All the best

Karl

PS: I am fully booked until the end of March. I will have space for 3 new clients from April, if you’d like to be one of them, please reach out. You can subscribe to this letter here.