"If you are to read one book on executive self-management, it should be this, Peter Drucker's definitive classic, The Effective Executive."

"As Drucker states early in these pages: people endowed with tremendous brilliance are often ""strikingly ineffectual."""

"1: FIRST, MANAGE THYSELF"

"Drucker lays out a law of organized performance: the ratio of a leader's performance to those on his or her team remains constant; therefore, if you want the average performance of those around you to go up, you must first improve your own performance."

"2: DO WHAT YOU'RE MADE FOR"

"One of Drucker's most arresting points is that we are all incompetent at most things."

"3: WORK HOW YOU WORK BEST (AND LET OTHERS DO THE SAME)"

"Drucker gave me the confidence to calendar white space in the morning and to be belligerently reclusive during creative hours"

"4: COUNT YOUR TIME, AND MAKE IT COUNT"

"Inspired by Drucker's challenge, I've kept a spreadsheet with one key metric: the number of creative hours logged each day, with the self-imposed imperative to stay above a thousand creative hours a year."

"The ""secret"" of people who do so many difficult things, writes Drucker, is that they do only one thing at a time; they refuse to let themselves be squandered away in ""small driblets [that] are no time at all."""

"First, create unbroken blocks for individual think time, preferably during the must lucid time of day; these pockets of quietude might be only 90 minutes, but even the busiest executive must do them with regularity."

"Second, create chunks of deliberately unstructured time for people and the inevitable stuff that comes up."

"Third, engage in meetings that matter, making particular use of carefully constructed standing meetings that can be the heartbeat of dialogue, debate, and decision; and use some of your think time to prepare and follow up."

"5: PREPARE BETTER MEETINGS"

"6: DON'T MAKE A HUNDRED DECISIONS WHEN ONE WILL DO"

"In Drucker's view, we rarely face truly unique, one-off decisions."

"So, given this overhead cost, it's far better to Zoom Out and make a few big generic decisions that can apply to a large number of specific situations, to find a pattern within—in short, to go from chaos to concept."

"7: FIND YOUR ONE BIG DISTINCTIVE IMPACT"

"""Identify one big thing that would most contribute to the future of the university and orchestrate getting it done. If you make one distinctive contribution—a key decision that would not have happened without your leadership (even if no one ever credits you for your catalytic role)—then you will have rendered a great service."""

"8: STOP WHAT YOU WOULD NOT START"

"9: RUN LEAN"

"One of Drucker's most important insights is that an organization is like a biological organism in one key way: internal mass grows at a faster rate than external surface; thus, as the organization grows, an increasing proportion of energy diverts to managing the internal mass rather than contributing to the outside world."

"Resist the temptation to redesign seats on the bus to specific personalities (except for the exceptionally rare genius), as this will inevitably create seats you don't need"

"""The fewer people, the smaller, the less activity inside,"" writes Drucker, ""the more nearly perfect is the organization."""

"""The question is: how to be useful!"" A great teacher can change your life in thirty seconds."

"10: BE USEFUL"

"Level 5 leaders display a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will. They're incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the cause, for the organization and its purpose, not themselves."

"While Level 5 leaders can come in many personality packages, they are often self-effacing, quiet, reserved, and even shy."

"All the good-to-great companies had Level 5 leadership at the time of transition."

"Given that Level 5 leadership cuts against the grain of conventional wisdom, especially the belief that we need larger-than-life saviors with big personalities to transform companies, it is important to note that Level 5 is an empirical finding, not an ideological one."

"They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results. …It is very important to grasp that Level 5 leadership is not just about humility and modesty."

"It is equally about ferocious resolve, an almost stoic determination to do whatever needs to be done to make the company great."

"In looking at the data, we noticed that some of the leaders in our study had significant life experiences that might have sparked or furthered their maturation."