Foreword: to the 50th Anniversary Edition of The Effective Executive
Lessons learned from Peter Drucker: anyone who has responsibility for getting the right things done – anyone who seeks how best to self-deploy on the few priorities that will make the biggest impact – is an executive.
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Managing conflict is broader than what most people understand as ‘mediation’, which we might paraphrase as: ‘an intervention between disagreeing parties involving a third party, aimed at bringing the dispute to a conclusion that both can accept’. It is a responsibility that needs to be shared by the whole management team of any organization as much as with those who might often be though of as ‘the conflict specialists’:
Structural analysis
Observations on spontaneous social activities show that, from time to time, people visibly change their body position, point of view, tone of voice, vocabulary, or even other aspects of their behaviors. These behavioral changes are often followed by emotional changes. These changes and differences can be called “ego states”.
Each individual seems to have a limited set of such ego states, and they should not be mistaken with roles, but they are philological realities.
This set of states can be grouped into the following categories:
You can easily see the importance of “striking at the roots” in other dimensions – for instance, when you compare the impact of focusing on preventing disease instead of merely treating it, or on preventing crime instead of simply enforcing the law. In this book, you begin to see it in business where, instead of compliance, the focus is on optimization through developing an ethical character, transparent motivation, and superb competence in producing sustained, superior results.
The final post in this series is now available. “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is a book that can guide you through challenges and it is helpful to keep it near.
1️⃣ The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Part One: Paradigms and Principles
2️⃣ The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Part two: Private Victory
3️⃣ The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Part three: Public Victory
“You can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.”
Real self-respect comes from dominion over self, from true independence. And that’s the focus on Habits 1,2 and 3. Independence is an achievement. Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. Unless we are willing to achieve real independence, it’s foolish to try to develop human relations skills. We might try. But when the difficult times come, and they will, we won’t have the foundation to keep things together.
In this article, we will cover the first three habits, part of the Private Victory: be proactive, begin with the end in mind, and put first things first. The first post from this series contains details about Paradigms and Principles. So, let’s get started!
Almost all the literature in the first 150 years or so focused on what could be called the Character Ethic as the foundation of success – things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule.
Character Ethics taught that there are basic principles of effective living and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character.
This article closes the “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” series. The first one focused on presenting the 4 disciplines of execution, the second one was about how to apply the disciplines when you are a leader of leaders and the third one is about applying 4DX as a Leader of a Frontline Team.
alin miu 