Sunday, August 17, 2008

FOCUS (Enfoque) quotations & proverbs

Please post your favorite quotations and proverbs with regard to the Focus talent!
Le gustarĂ­a escribir una cita o proverbio que hable sobre el talento Enfoque?

6 comments:

Matthias said...

"Setting a posteriority is ... unpleasant. Every posteriority is someone's priority. It is much easier to draw up a nice list of top priorities and then hedge by trying to do "just a little bit" of everything as well. This makes everybody happy. The only drawback is, of course, that nothing whatever gets done!"

Peter Drucker in "The Effective Executive", p 111

I believe that people with Focus can develop the strength of making the unpleasant decisions of setting posteriorities and focusing on the priorities.

Matthias said...

"This is the "secret" of those people who "do so many things" and apparantly so many difficult things: they do only one at a time. As a result, they need much less time in the end than the rest of us."

Peter Drucker in "The Effective Executive", p. 103

And this is also the "secret" of people who have developed their Focus talent into a real strength!

Matthias said...

"Above all, the effective executive will slough off and old activity before he starts a new one. This is necessary to keep organizational "weight control"."

Peter Drucker in "The Effective Executive", p. 107

People with Focus have the opportunity to develop this talent, maybe especially so if combined with Command. Because sloughing off old activities can meet a lot of resistance. That is because...

"Yesterday's successes ... always linger on long beyond their productive life. Even more dangerous are the activities which should do well and which, for some reason or other, do not produce. Yet, unless they are pruned, and pruned ruthlessly, they drain the lifeblood of an organization. It is always the most capable people who are wasted in the futile attempt to obtain for (such) investment in managerial ego the "success it deserves"."

Peter Drucker in "The Effective Executive", p. 104

Command folks! admit it: you love that "pruned ruthlessly", don't you?

Matthias said...

"If there is any one "secret" of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first, and they do one thing at a time."

Peter Drucker in, ...guess what? "The Effective Executive", p. 100. I love this book!

Matthias said...

"The more (an executive) switches from being busy to achieving results, the more he will shift to sustained efforts - efforts which require a fairly big quantum of time to bear fruit. Yet to get even that half-day or those two weeks of really productive time requires self-discipline and an iron determination to say "No!".

Peter Drucker in, yes again, "The Effective Executive", p. 100. I promise I will quote more from other books in the near future!

I guess if Drucker had known the 34 talents, he would have ended this paragraph saying: "Yet to get even that half-day or those two weeks of really productive time requires ... FOCUS"; ideally with a "dash" of Command and Discipline.

Matthias said...

“Are particular themes more suitable for managers?

No -- and yes. In our [= Gallup’s] research, we have found thousands of great managers whose Signature Themes differ quite a bit. However, we've also found that many successful managers have similar Signature Themes. For example, many possess Developer in their top five, and this enables them to spot small increments of growth in their employees. Other Signature Themes common to managers include: Focus, the ability to distinguish between a short cut and a distraction; Individualization, the ability to identify and play to the uniqueness of each employee; Activator, an unrelenting drive to make a decision and act; Arranger, the ability to size up the elements of a situation and rearrange them in the most productive configuration; and Maximizer, the natural inclination to take people or endeavors from good to great.”

Source: http://gmj.gallup.com/content/568/particular-themes-more-suitable-managers.aspx