$15.95
Customize It
Paperback
192 pages
ISBN 9780060516079 Published Sept. 2002
HarperCollins Publishers
See all formats
Tweet
Posted March 19, 2007 5:40 a.m. by jack
In Lists - 800 CEO Read Blog
Saturday's Wall Street Journal had a list of the five blue-chip business management books. The list was compiled by Ken Roman, a former advertising executive. I think it is one of the best lists I have seen.
1> The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
2> Management and Machiavelli (out of print) by Antony Jay
3> What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School By Mark McCormick
4> Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy
5> Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? by Lou Gerstner
A brilliant list.
Tom's Take on Peter Drucker
Posted Nov. 25, 2005 5:39 a.m. by tom-ehrenfeld
In Thought Leaders - 800 CEO Read Blog
Peter Druckers work calls two masters to mind: Bob Marley and William Shakespeare. What About Bob, you ask. Well, Drucker brings Marley to mind (my mind at least) for his central, solar, role in his universe. Theres no musical genre so dominated by one artist as reggae music is by Bob Marley. Linton Kwesi Johnson gets my vote as a genius, sure, but the scope and influence and genius of Marley animates all. Likewise Drucker with management writing: his oeuvre recapitulates virtually everything meaningful in the field.
And while its overblown to compare him with Shakespeare as a canon of world literature, reading Drucker invariably triggers a sense of executive dj vu. His ideas feel so familiar compared with every major business idea that has come upon the scenesince his work. As the Economist says, The biggest problem with evaluating Mr. Druckers influence is that so many of his ideas have passed into conventional wisdomin other words, he is the victim of his own success.
The intellectual debt to Drucker dwarfs that of the US trade deficit. Case in point: Im re-reading The Effective Executive, which contains the key ideas of Brian Tracy, The One-Minute Manager, and much of David Allen, for starters. And there in chapter five, First Things First, which deals with prioritizing, Drucker riffs on the need for companies to make brutal strategic choices when pursuing opportunity. His assertion that in business the successful companies are not those that work at developing new products for their existing line but those that aim at innovating new technologies or new businesses basically sets the table for the works of Clay Christensen, Adrian Slywotzky, Chris Zook, and Blue Ocean Strategy, to name a few. And catch this gem from his brief intro to My Years with General Motors: Leadership is not charisma. It is not public relations. It is not showmanship. It is performance, consistent behavior, trustworthiness. Searching for A Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs anyone?
Unfortunately theres been some backlash to the myriad Drucker tributes that have appeared over the past few weeks (Im not going to link to them). Essentially, a few folks have complained about the sentimentality of some of the tributes, while others have argued that if Drucker was so influential, more people would be benefiting from his ideas today.
Point one rebuttal. Yes, many folks are verklempt about Druckers passing, even those who never met him. But why gripe about his ability to spark a personal response? I always admired Drucker for more than his ideas; his life was instructive and inspiring as well. Peter Drucker was a rare business guru who actually lived according to the powerful principles he counseled to others. Its hard enough to articulate a set of ideas that help other people get things done in the world, and tougher still to find a way for them to take root. And yet those accomplishments are mere training wheels compared to the X Games bicycle stunt competition of actually living by the ideals you preach. The lifecycle of consultancies fueled by fads is about as short and heated as Vinnie the Microwave Johnsons hot spells for the Detroit Pistons. For a number of very good reasons, when it comes to the world of management thinking and consulting, genius doesnt scale. The think tanks preaching speed-to-market take twice as long as others to produce articles and books; the guru preaching flat organizations creates companies with more job titles than your basic film credits. Theres rarely much intellectual alignment between great business ideas and the secular practice of spreading these principles, let along living them.
Thats where Drucker taught by example. He wasnt just productive, he was effective. He didnt do things or projects, he got results. And he realized them on a massive scale by communicating his ideas to people who applied them powerfully. He focused his time and energy on what he did best. Simple and sensible, and yet so difficult. My current hero in this regard is Jim Collins, who makes a conscious effort to apply this ideas to his life (thats a subject for another post.)
Finally, to reply to folks who gripe that Drucker should have been more influential. Bunk. The barriers to excellence here have nothing to do with the quality of his thinking or the way he delivered it. To paraphrase a guy I already cited, the fault, dear brute, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
Lisa Berkowitz on Peter Drucker
Posted Nov. 18, 2005 5:52 a.m. by kate
In Current Events - 800 CEO Read Blog
I've always had a thing for older, brilliant men, so when Peter Drucker entered my life fifteen years ago, I thought I died and went to heaven.
Drucker was a very low maintenance author, and, unlike other business gurus, shunned the spotlight. Peter would simply call me occasionally to check on reviews or request books. He would start every conversation by identifying himself. "This is Peter Drucker," he would say slowly and methodically, as if that distinctive Viennese accent could possibly belong to anyone else.
I had the privilege to work with Peter on The Effective Executive, Post-Capitalist Society, Managing In Turbulent Times, Management Challenges in the 21st Century and The Essential Drucker. His authenticity and genius are breathtaking. I may not have an MBA from Harvard, but the experience gave me something much more precious, and something money can't buy. I truly found religion in business through my exposure to Drucker in print and in person. Now it's he who is in heaven with the other management gods.
--
Written By:
Lisa Berkowitz
President
Berkowitz & Associates
Former Associate Publishing Director and VP of Marketing and Communications for HarperBusiness
Robert May on Peter Drucker
Posted Nov. 18, 2005 3:32 a.m. by kate
In Current Events - 800 CEO Read Blog
I read a lot of books, particularly business books. What I dislike about many of them is that the authors have tunnel-vision. Business is complex, and a one-size-fits-all approach is rarely successful. Authors that present their business ideas as a panacea ignore the importance of context in business decision making.
Peter Drucker had no tunnel-vision. His writings, when taken in small excerpts, can often seem confusing and contradictory, but a wide survey of Drucker writings reveal that is not the case. Drucker simply realized that there is never an absolute answer that business is about tradeoffs, and that context is important when making business decisions.
So why read Drucker? Because it is the best way to learn how to think about business. His books give you insights into his mind and thought process. Instead of teaching you to apply the same approach across a variety of problems, Drucker shows you how to analyze a business problem and make good solid decisions that take all the major factors into account. He points out the counterintuitive nature of many business solutions, and he is a master at balancing the needs of the various stakeholders involved.
If you have never read Peter Drucker, I would suggest beginning with The Daily Drucker, The Effective Executive, or The Essential Drucker. To close, I will leave you with a few of major favorite Peter Drucker quotes.
Management by objectives works if you first think through your objectives. Ninety percent of the time you haven't.Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately generate into hard work.
So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Thank you Peter Drucker, for you contributions. Your examples of disciplined thought and lifelong learning are something to which we should all aspire.
--
Written By:
Robert May
May has an MBA from the University of Kentucky. He is a consultant and entrepreneur.
You can read his blog at www.businesspundit.com.
Michael Ballé on Peter Drucker
Posted Nov. 17, 2005 8:14 a.m. by kate
In Current Events - 800 CEO Read Blog
I mourn Peter Druckers passing greatly, because, to my mind, he was the business writer. No other business author Ive read comes even close. He created the genre, and he remained its best exponent. His enduring influence was less about his individual positions on topical matters than it was about his unique ability to trigger insights in his many readers. Every other business person I meet has had a "Drucker moment", when a comment, or an anecdote has spurred a profound "aha!" experience.
Freddy Ball, my Gold Mine co-author, recounts hearing Peter Drucker respond in an interview to the "raiders" phenomenon in the eighties. Even vultures, Drucker explained, have a role to play in nature. Running a company is hard work, and CEOs much prefer doing spectacular deals with their peers in closed rooms, which will make them look good. So companies grow through acquisitions, mergers, joint venture, and so on. As they do, they accumulate layer after layer of fat, until they collapse under their own weight, at when it finally happens, the vultures are there to tear the company apart and put the individual components back into the circuit. Whenever Freddy hears about one more "major" deal being made, he thinks about the cow being fattened for the vultures. And all that time and energy spent deal making, is not spent running the business.
My own Drucker moment occurred reading a passage opposing Taylorism and Marxism. Drucker claims that Frederick Taylor is the great hero who saved the western world from the international workers revolution. His argument is that by finding a way to dramatically increase productivity without making workers work harder, but by using staff functions to make workers work smarter, Taylor opened up a brave new world in which the workers son becomes an engineer, the engineers daughter becomes a marketing executive and so on. Right or wrong, the argument was so powerful that it immediately forced me to reevaluate my prejudices about Taylors work, and rediscover the very basis of work organization.
But most of all, what I always liked about reading Drucker was his own very human focus on the fact that management is about human beings, and his profound respect for front-line workers. I was struck years ago, when I started working in the healthcare field, by his description of "Nurse Bryan." In his 1966 book The Effective Executive, Drucker describes how a new hospital administrator, in a staff meeting, thought that a difficult matter had been resolved when one of the participants asked: Would this have satisfied Nurse Bryan? At once the argument started all over and did not subside until a new and much more ambitious solution to the problem had been hammered out. Nurse Bryan had been a long serving and now retired nurse at the hospital, who would always ask, are we doing the best we can do to help this patient? Patients on Nurse Bryans floor did better and recovered faster. Gradually, the hospital staff had learned to adopt Nurse Bryans rule. This, to me is pure Drucker. Although he was one of the strongest advocates of management, with all the unfortunate fall-out we now know of, he never lost sight of the profound and abiding value of individual contribution, and commitment of workers to doing their job well, for a better world.
Over the years, Ive had many a Drucker moment, often triggered by some of his more improbable notions, such as the idea that what explains both the Jesuits and the Calvinists runaway success was the simple practice of writing down their expectations for the coming period, and then comparing it to what really happened, and learning from the process. Or his description of Britains Indian Empire run uniquely through a process of inspections and long reports to the crown. In any case, regardless of the historical veracity of his examples, or the accuracy of his descriptions, every other Peter Drucker passage is so full of incomparable intuition that Ive always felt more intelligent by the virtue of reading his books (a feeling which unfortunately fades away quickly after putting the book down.)
Its such a shame that the world has lost this incredible pen, and this treasured source of insights. Certainly, Peter Druckers example has sponsored many vocations, and new, talented business writers emerge every day, but I fear that the original formula is now irretrievably lost, and were all the poorer for it. Still, his books remain, and although some general propositions are now somewhat faded, the specifics of his thinking are still as insightful and ever, and remain an ever-fresh source of inspiration.
--
Written By:
Michael Ball
Author with Freddy Ball of The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Transformation.
