ABSTRACT
Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results. By themselves, they only set limits to what can be attained. Formerly, the manual worker — whether machine operator or front-line soldier — predominated in all organizations. Few people of effectiveness were needed: those at the top who gave the orders that others carried out. They were so small a fraction of the total work population that we could, rightly or wrongly, take their effectiveness for granted. Education is the one area, therefore, in which the richest of all societies, the United States, has a genuine advantage — provided it can make the knowledge worker productive. And productivity for the knowledge worker means the ability to get the right things done, it means effectiveness. Effectiveness thus deserves high priority because of the needs of organization. It deserves even greater priority as the tool of the executive and as his access to achievement and performance.
