ABSTRACT
The focus on contribution is the key to effectiveness: in one's own work (its content, its level, its standards, and its impacts) in one's relations with others (with superiors, associates, subordinates), and in the use of the tools of the executive such as meetings or reports. The focus on contribution turns one’s attention away from his own specialty, his own narrow skills, his own department, and toward the performance of the whole. For the knowledge worker to focus on contribution is particularly important. The person of knowledge has always been expected to take responsibility for being understood. It is barbarian arrogance to assume that the layman can or should make the effort to understand the specialist, and that it is enough if the person of knowledge talks to a handful of fellow experts who are his peers. Knowledge workers in an organization do not have good human relations because they have a “talent for people.”.
