Peter Drucker shares legendary advice on leadership. We ignore this at our peril. His article is a gold mine. Coaches are leaders, teachers, mentors, models, energizers, judges.
Here are five annotated nuggets:
1. "To be effective, executives need to follow eight practices:
They continually ask: “What needs to get done?”
They always ask: “What is right for the enterprise?”
They develop action plans
They take responsibility for decisions
They take responsibility for communicating
They focus on opportunities rather than problems
They run productive meetings
They think and say “we” rather than “I”"
What do we need? How can we communicate and own it? Focus on implementation. Drucker argues for finding key opportunities and matching your best people to them.
2. "The essence of systematic time management is finding the unproductive, time-wasting activities and getting rid of them. First one must identify and eliminate the things that need not be done at all. To find these time-wasters, one must ask of all activities: “What would happen if this were not done at all?” And if the answer is, “Nothing would happen,” then obviously the conclusion is to stop doing it. The next question is: “Which of the activities could be done by somebody else just as well, if not if not better?”"
Coach Nick Saban says, "clear the clutter." Stop wasting time and delegate better.
3. "Every organization needs performance in three major areas: It needs direct results; building of values and their reaffirmation; and building and developing people for tomorrow. All three areas have to be built into the contribution of every executive."
Culture determines current and future results.
4. "If there is any one “secret” of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives concentrate on one thing at a time. They do the first things first."
Establish priorities. "Plan. Do. Check. Act." We can't know what players know unless we get and give feedback. Details matter.
5. "The two basic mistakes are to treat a generic situation as if it were a series of unique events and to treat a new event as if it were just another example of the old problem to which, the old rules can be applied."
Over thirty years after the introduction of the 3-Point shot, we see tectonic shifts in its implementation, analysis, offensive reconstruction, and defense. The "old rules" no longer apply.