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. Few people of effectiveness were needed: mainly 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. Most of them worked by themselves as professionals, at most with an assistant. Their effectiveness or lack of effectiveness concerned only themselves and affected only themselves. Knowledge workers cannot be supervised closely or in detail. They can only be helped. But they must direct themselves, and they must do so toward performance and contribution, that is, toward effectiveness. The realities of the knowledge workers’ situation both demand effectiveness from them and make effectiveness exceedingly difficult to achieve.
