A quick look at today’s most pressing business issues through the eyes of Peter Drucker—the father of modern management
As technology, globalization, and business innovation advance at breakneck speed, the question “What would Drucker do now?” becomes more relevant by the day. More than anyone of his time, Peter Drucker understood how the individual, the organization, and society are interrelated. And no one better recognized and articulated the challenges facing all three—or came up with more practical solutions to those challenges.
Since 2007, the Drucker Institute’s executive director, Rick Wartzman, has been asking what Drucker would do on a regular basis— in his popular online column for Bloomberg Businessweek. In each piece, Wartzman introduces a current issue and provides a view of it through the eyes of Peter Drucker, based on his deep knowledge of Drucker’s ideas and ideals.
Teams That Flow ebook - Nokia #SmarterEverydayNokia
Flow is the psychological description of those really satisfying occasions
at work: you’re productive, engaged, confident and operating at your full potential. When a team is in flow, it’s innovative, harmonious and productive. Being part of it improves the performance of each member. Communication is purposeful and clear. Friction is seen as an opportunity, not a personal threat. Location and time zones pose no barriers. The balance is just right, and everything flows.
This book is a guide to building a team that flows. We’re going to begin with the theory, explaining the concepts and elements you need to create flow, before moving onto the practicalities of harnessing the power of collaboration,
working alongside technology, and leading a more productive working life within any team.
Growing Agility ebook - Nokia - #SmarterEverydayNokia
What is Growing Agility? Well, firstly it’s the latest ebook in the Smarter Everyday series, but beyond that, it’s a concept that we hope you’ll find useful in your working life.
As you’re bound to have experienced, you can’t predict and plan for every eventuality, and you can’t control the external factors that influence your business. What you do have control over is how you respond. That’s what growing agility is about: becoming more flexible in your behaviour, and developing the ability to dodge, jump, tackle or even pick yourself up after being hit by those curveballs that work can throw at you; whether it’s getting feedback that’s hard to swallow, losing out on a promotion, or a unsuccessful project.
Teams That Flow ebook - Nokia #SmarterEverydayNokia
Flow is the psychological description of those really satisfying occasions
at work: you’re productive, engaged, confident and operating at your full potential. When a team is in flow, it’s innovative, harmonious and productive. Being part of it improves the performance of each member. Communication is purposeful and clear. Friction is seen as an opportunity, not a personal threat. Location and time zones pose no barriers. The balance is just right, and everything flows.
This book is a guide to building a team that flows. We’re going to begin with the theory, explaining the concepts and elements you need to create flow, before moving onto the practicalities of harnessing the power of collaboration,
working alongside technology, and leading a more productive working life within any team.
Growing Agility ebook - Nokia - #SmarterEverydayNokia
What is Growing Agility? Well, firstly it’s the latest ebook in the Smarter Everyday series, but beyond that, it’s a concept that we hope you’ll find useful in your working life.
As you’re bound to have experienced, you can’t predict and plan for every eventuality, and you can’t control the external factors that influence your business. What you do have control over is how you respond. That’s what growing agility is about: becoming more flexible in your behaviour, and developing the ability to dodge, jump, tackle or even pick yourself up after being hit by those curveballs that work can throw at you; whether it’s getting feedback that’s hard to swallow, losing out on a promotion, or a unsuccessful project.
Altimeter Report: Making The Business Case For Enterprise Social NetworkingCharlene Li
In 2011, the US hit a milestone — more than half of all adults visit social networking sites at least once a month. But when it comes to using social-networking technologies inside organizations, many business leaders are at a loss to understand what value can be created from Facebook-like status updates within the enterprise. Some organizations have deployed social-networking features with an initial enthusiastic reception, only to see these early efforts wither to just a few stalwart participants. The problem: Most companies approach enterprise social networks as a technology deployment and fail to understand that the new relationships created by enterprise social networks are the source for value creation. In this first of two reports, Altimeter looks at four ways enterprise social networks create value for organizations.
Mobile Mastery ebook - Nokia - #SmarterEverydayNokia
Mobile - being connected everywhere to everything and everyone - is the fact of modern life. It defines how we live, how we work, how we communicate and how the world runs. It is the tool we reach for first when we are faced with challenges big and small in our everyday lives.
But despite the rapid pace with which we’ve adopted it, we’re still learning the best and most effective ways to use mobile technology, how to make the most of the opportunities and how to avoid the pitfalls.
That is what mobile mastery is about – gaining the skills and knowledge we need to work with technology in a productive, efficient and beneficial way.
For more #SmarterEveryday content follow us @NokiaAtWork
Encouraging and Facilitating Collaboration at WorkMichael Sampson
The slides from my keynote presentation at Congres Intranet 2012 in Utrecht, in March 2012. I talked about the reality of the intranet, the nature of collaboration, and how to encourage and facilitate collaboration at work by overcoming barriers to collaboration.
There is a new paradigm shift in technology that was powerful enough to help Barack Obama get elected as President of the United States. That paradigm shift is called social networking.
This white paper has two purposes. First, it is to help you understand the fine points about social networking. In order to do that, I will use the recent Presidential election as an example.
Second, the purpose is to help organizations understand the most effective way to implement this new technology. Some attempts have failed because they did not do a good job of defining their goals or
Changing the World of Work: Why Social is Broken and How to Fix ItDigital Clarity Group
Presentation deck from May 2014 Get Clarity webinar. In the webinar (available here:http://www.digitalclaritygroup.com/why-social-is-broken-and-how-to-fix-it/#recording) analyst Tim Walter provides an exclusive look at how social interactions are changing the not-so-distant future of work.
Despite great enthusiasm and some positive results, enterprise social tools and practices have failed to make a significant impact in terms of implementations, adoption, regular use, or business results.
In fact, enterprise social will continue to falter as long as the focus is on the tools and practices (i.e. the "build it and they will come" fallacy), or the benefits for the employees (i.e. the "it's all about the people" fallacy).
After watching the webinar video, you'll learn how to course correct for enterprise social that works. Tim explains how and why the social business can flourish when it is used to address a fundamental shift in business conditions -- namely, the empowerment of consumers and the consequent need for all firms to master customer experience management (CEM).
Design Your Day ebook - Nokia - #SmarterEverydayNokia
This book is about a powerful idea: making the choice to design your day so that you can perform at your best.
There are many productivity and time-management models out there - and we list many of the good ones in part one of the ebook - but there is no single model that fits everyone. Different brain types suit different working styles and different productivity systems. We’re not advocating any particular scheme, just a framework that makes the most of them and helps you to choose the right approach for designing your day.
For more #SmarterEveryday content follow us @NokiaAtWork
The netarchy is a new paradigm that draws a bold new way to build the organizations of the future. A new organizational structure designed for a new interconnected world. The netarchy complements the organizational structures inherited from the past and provides a systematic approach to keep us competitive when the change is discontinuous and the future is less and less an extrapolation of the past ..
To compete and win in a world of accelerated change, we need a second network-based organizational architecture, which allows organizations to innovate, adapt and interact with the new reality, complementing the hierarchy so that it can do, what Is optimized to do.
Claiming our Humanity - Managing in the Digital Age. 33 Top Quotes from Globa...Vladimir Vulic
The Global Peter Drucker Forum is an international management conference dedicated to the management philosophy of Peter Drucker. Drucker, who lived from 1909 to 2005, was a management professor, writer, and consultant, frequently referred to as a "management guru." The Forum is held annually in November, in Drucker's home town of Vienna, Austria and is put on by the Peter Drucker Society Europe, an affiliate of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. (source: Wikipedia) The 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum was held on November 5-6, 2015 at the Hall of Sciences in Vienna. This is the selection of Top 33 Quotes from Global Peter Drucker Forum 2015.
Vladimir Vulic, November 2015
The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker - Book ReviewAlmog Ramrajkar
Peter Drucker - Rightfully known as the Father of Management has written over 39 books and has been honoured by prestigious awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. The book "The Essential Drucker" is a compilation of 26 chapters from Drucker's 60 years of work.It takes you through Peter Drucker's thoughts on Management and the values that differentiate great managers from good. In a nutshell;, the book talks about the origins of management, how organizations have evolved, what drives them, what kind of data is needed by executives in the modern day functioning and what qualities are required to be developed to move from Good to great. These qualities include, leadership, good communication, time management, accountability etc.
Enjoy the presentation and please share your thoughts and comments!!!
Altimeter Report: Making The Business Case For Enterprise Social NetworkingCharlene Li
In 2011, the US hit a milestone — more than half of all adults visit social networking sites at least once a month. But when it comes to using social-networking technologies inside organizations, many business leaders are at a loss to understand what value can be created from Facebook-like status updates within the enterprise. Some organizations have deployed social-networking features with an initial enthusiastic reception, only to see these early efforts wither to just a few stalwart participants. The problem: Most companies approach enterprise social networks as a technology deployment and fail to understand that the new relationships created by enterprise social networks are the source for value creation. In this first of two reports, Altimeter looks at four ways enterprise social networks create value for organizations.
Mobile Mastery ebook - Nokia - #SmarterEverydayNokia
Mobile - being connected everywhere to everything and everyone - is the fact of modern life. It defines how we live, how we work, how we communicate and how the world runs. It is the tool we reach for first when we are faced with challenges big and small in our everyday lives.
But despite the rapid pace with which we’ve adopted it, we’re still learning the best and most effective ways to use mobile technology, how to make the most of the opportunities and how to avoid the pitfalls.
That is what mobile mastery is about – gaining the skills and knowledge we need to work with technology in a productive, efficient and beneficial way.
For more #SmarterEveryday content follow us @NokiaAtWork
Encouraging and Facilitating Collaboration at WorkMichael Sampson
The slides from my keynote presentation at Congres Intranet 2012 in Utrecht, in March 2012. I talked about the reality of the intranet, the nature of collaboration, and how to encourage and facilitate collaboration at work by overcoming barriers to collaboration.
There is a new paradigm shift in technology that was powerful enough to help Barack Obama get elected as President of the United States. That paradigm shift is called social networking.
This white paper has two purposes. First, it is to help you understand the fine points about social networking. In order to do that, I will use the recent Presidential election as an example.
Second, the purpose is to help organizations understand the most effective way to implement this new technology. Some attempts have failed because they did not do a good job of defining their goals or
Changing the World of Work: Why Social is Broken and How to Fix ItDigital Clarity Group
Presentation deck from May 2014 Get Clarity webinar. In the webinar (available here:http://www.digitalclaritygroup.com/why-social-is-broken-and-how-to-fix-it/#recording) analyst Tim Walter provides an exclusive look at how social interactions are changing the not-so-distant future of work.
Despite great enthusiasm and some positive results, enterprise social tools and practices have failed to make a significant impact in terms of implementations, adoption, regular use, or business results.
In fact, enterprise social will continue to falter as long as the focus is on the tools and practices (i.e. the "build it and they will come" fallacy), or the benefits for the employees (i.e. the "it's all about the people" fallacy).
After watching the webinar video, you'll learn how to course correct for enterprise social that works. Tim explains how and why the social business can flourish when it is used to address a fundamental shift in business conditions -- namely, the empowerment of consumers and the consequent need for all firms to master customer experience management (CEM).
Design Your Day ebook - Nokia - #SmarterEverydayNokia
This book is about a powerful idea: making the choice to design your day so that you can perform at your best.
There are many productivity and time-management models out there - and we list many of the good ones in part one of the ebook - but there is no single model that fits everyone. Different brain types suit different working styles and different productivity systems. We’re not advocating any particular scheme, just a framework that makes the most of them and helps you to choose the right approach for designing your day.
For more #SmarterEveryday content follow us @NokiaAtWork
The netarchy is a new paradigm that draws a bold new way to build the organizations of the future. A new organizational structure designed for a new interconnected world. The netarchy complements the organizational structures inherited from the past and provides a systematic approach to keep us competitive when the change is discontinuous and the future is less and less an extrapolation of the past ..
To compete and win in a world of accelerated change, we need a second network-based organizational architecture, which allows organizations to innovate, adapt and interact with the new reality, complementing the hierarchy so that it can do, what Is optimized to do.
Claiming our Humanity - Managing in the Digital Age. 33 Top Quotes from Globa...Vladimir Vulic
The Global Peter Drucker Forum is an international management conference dedicated to the management philosophy of Peter Drucker. Drucker, who lived from 1909 to 2005, was a management professor, writer, and consultant, frequently referred to as a "management guru." The Forum is held annually in November, in Drucker's home town of Vienna, Austria and is put on by the Peter Drucker Society Europe, an affiliate of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. (source: Wikipedia) The 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum was held on November 5-6, 2015 at the Hall of Sciences in Vienna. This is the selection of Top 33 Quotes from Global Peter Drucker Forum 2015.
Vladimir Vulic, November 2015
The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker - Book ReviewAlmog Ramrajkar
Peter Drucker - Rightfully known as the Father of Management has written over 39 books and has been honoured by prestigious awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. The book "The Essential Drucker" is a compilation of 26 chapters from Drucker's 60 years of work.It takes you through Peter Drucker's thoughts on Management and the values that differentiate great managers from good. In a nutshell;, the book talks about the origins of management, how organizations have evolved, what drives them, what kind of data is needed by executives in the modern day functioning and what qualities are required to be developed to move from Good to great. These qualities include, leadership, good communication, time management, accountability etc.
Enjoy the presentation and please share your thoughts and comments!!!
Peter F Drucker and His Contribution in ManagementNikhil Vyas
In this power point presentation, I try to collect all the main and important contribution made by Peter F Drucker and also gives the name of some of his publications etc.
Peter Ferdinand Drucker (November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) was a writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist.” His books and scholarly and popular articles explored how humans are organized across the business, government and the nonprofit sectors of society. He is one of the best-known and most widely influential thinkers and writers on the subject of management theory and practice. His writings have predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century, including privatization and decentralization; the rise of Japan to economic world power; the decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning. In 1959, Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker" and later in his life considered knowledge work productivity to be the next frontier of management.
HBR's 10 must reads on Innovation. Professor Rosabeth M. Kanter from Harvard Business School presents four classic traps in innovation. Companies have been putting resources for new breakthrough for product and service, however, repeatedly, they make the same mistakes as their predecessors.
A
rt
C
re
d
it
DRUCKER
TODAY
16268 Nov09 Kanter.indd 6416268 Nov09 Kanter.indd 64 10/2/09 12:48:49 PM10/2/09 12:48:49 PM
?
hbr.org | November 2009 | Harvard Business Review 65
J
o
h
n
L
a
n
g
The continuing relevance of the Drucker
perspective | by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
HEEDING THE WISDOM of Peter Drucker might have helped us
avoid – and will help us solve – numerous challenges plaguing
communities around the world: restoring trust in business
in the wake of accounting scandals and the global fi nancial
crisis; attracting and motivating the best talent without cre-
ating crippling fi nancial commitments; addressing societal
problems such as climate change, health care, and public
education; dealing with trouble spots in central Asia and the
Middle East.
If Peter Drucker were here today, what would he have to
say about such pressing matters? His fi rst comment might be
“I told you so” – and he would have every right to say that. In
remarkably prescient writings, he pointed to important trends
and looming disasters. He took a broad look at the context
surrounding organizations, noting jarring events he called dis-
continuities. Next, since the signs of diffi culties ahead were
there all along, he might follow up by telling us, “Look at the
underlying systems.” Drucker rarely named or blamed indi-
viduals; he saw root causes in the design of organizations – in
their structures, processes, norms, and routines. He would re-
mind us that it is the responsibility of executives to challenge
that design while being mindful of their companies’ ultimate
purpose. Then he might fi nish by asking leaders a few provoca-
tive questions: “What is your mission? What should you stop
WHAT
WOULD
PETER
SAY
16268 Nov09 Kanter.indd 6516268 Nov09 Kanter.indd 65 10/2/09 12:49:01 PM10/2/09 12:49:01 PM
66 Harvard Business Review | November 2009 | hbr.org
What Would Peter Say?DRUCKER
TODAY
doing? Where has the drive for short-term effi cien-
cies undermined long-term eff ectiveness? What
should be your objectives and guiding principles?”
My credentials for channeling Peter Drucker
stem from early in my career – the fi rst time I
spoke on a panel with him, more than 25 years ago
in Brussels. They extend beyond his death to the
Drucker fi ngerprints I found in my multinational
research for my latest book, SuperCorp. Managers
everywhere, especially in Asia, described Drucker
encounters as pivotal in making their enterprises
well run and helping their countries develop.
Drucker’s Early Warnings
In the process of identifying the tasks of managers,
Drucker laid out their responsibilities in guiding
organizations to endure in a world of change. Here
are some of the critical issues he anticipated.
The bonus brouhaha. Drucker would not have
been surprised that incentives to take excessive
risks contributed to the recent global fi nancial
meltdown. Back in the mid-1980s, he warned about
a.
Management has served us well. Since the Industrial Revolution it has paved the way for a sustained and accelerating rise in living standards unheard of and unforeseen. But with the ‘digital revolution’, we are entering
a new era where the logic of industrial-age organisation has lost its purchase.
Radically Human: How AI-Powered And New Technologies Are Shaping Our Future Bernard Marr
The latest book co-authored by Accenture CTO and futurist Paul Daugherty, Radically Human, examines the intersection between humanity and machines in the era of digital transformation and the implications it has for business and society. I talked to him about some of his ideas and predictions for the future.
A knowledge worker is someone who is employed because of his or her knowledge of a subject matter, rather than ability to perform manual labor. They perform best when empowered to make the most of their deepest skills.
Goal Summit 2016: Insights From Peter DruckerBetterWorks
Hailed as "the man who invented management" and the father of MBO, Peter Drucker was one of the most influential business thinkers of all time. In this session from the BetterWorks Goal Summit 2016, Rick Wartzman, Senior Advisor at the Drucker Institute, shares how Drucker's teachings can be applied in today's competitive business environment.
This is an introduction to Peter Drucker, the man who invented management.
note: Centum U- is a bharti associate company and the publisher is in no way associated with the organization and the materials used in this presentation is extracted from different websites and in no way centum u may be held responsible for any copyright infringement for the material used in this ppt.
The author is a student of CENTUM-U and this ppt. was presented as a part of curriculum.
The Cover Photo is self clicked photo at Gulmarg, Jammu & Kashmir and can be used/published freely
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1. Peter Drucker has been described as “the man who invented management.” And yet, shortly before he died in 2005, Drucker told a reporter, “I consider it quite likely that three years after my death my name will be of absolutely no advantage.”
2. In other words, Drucker was suggesting that he—and, by extension, his ideas and ideals—would quickly fade away.
3. On this point, of course, the normally prescient Drucker couldn ’t have been more wrong. His principles and practices continue to resonate today—as illustrated in this new book, What Would Drucker Do Now?, by Rick Wartzman , executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. A compendium of Wartzman ’s popular online columns for Bloomberg Businessweek, What Would Drucker Do Now? ties insights gleaned from Peter Drucker’s 39 books and countless essays to some of the hottest issues and events dominating today’s headlines.
4. Rick Wartzman The result is what Warren Bennis has described as “a tapestry of ideas drawn from Wartzman’s observations and personal experiences, woven together with the wisdom of the most important management thinker of this or any other age.” Why does this mind meld work so well? And why does Drucker ’s body of work remain so relevant five years after his death and more than 70 years after he started writing?
5. There are really two reasons. First, Drucker ’s work is timeless. Kenneth Wilson, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and education reformer, once remarked that as Newton was to mathematics, Darwin was to biology, and Einstein was to physics, Drucker was to our understanding of organizations and society. But, second, Drucker ’s work is also timely —remarkably so when you consider how much of it was formulated a half-century ago. Examples abound, and they ’re illuminated throughout What Would Drucker Do Now?
6. When Cisco Systems, the giant computer networking equipment maker, decides to stop manufacturing the Flip camcorder so it can concentrate on its core business, it ’s taking a page right from Drucker’s book on smart growth .“A business actually grows if it sloughs off activities which do not contribute,” Drucker declared. “Such activities only drain. They impede the true growth potential.”
7. When the new chief executive of Time Inc. shakes up the magazine publisher and is then fired after just five months on the job, you have to believe that he would have been wise to listen to Drucker ’s dictum that leaders must tread carefully when seeking to change things .“There is indeed a need to change deeply ingrained habits in a good many organizations,” Drucker wrote. But trying to impose a new culture is not the way to get there. “Culture—no matter how defined—is singularly persistent,” he asserted. “In fact, changing behavior works only if it can be based on the existing ‘culture.’”
8. When Burger King sees its business decline after focusing almost exclusively on young male customers, you can practically hear Drucker telling executives at the fast-food chain that they’ve forgotten to pay attention to another essential group: their “noncustomers.” “Even the biggest enterprise (other than a government monopoly) has many more noncustomers than it has customers,” Drucker wrote, noting that hardly any companies supply even 30 percent of a given market. “And yet very few institutions know anything about the noncustomers—very few of them even know that they exist, let alone know who they are. And even fewer know why they are not customers.”
9. When managers at Procter & Gamble, Netflix, Intuit and other companies engage in various forms of collaborative research and open innovation, you can picture Drucker applauding them for figuring out how to reach beyond their organization ’s own walls and bring in fresh ideas from the outside .“The outside, the area of results, is much less accessible than the inside,” Drucker wrote. “The central problem of executives in the large organization is their insulation from the outside. What today’s organization therefore needs are synthetic sense organs for the outside.”
10. When executives at Lehman Brothers become preoccupied with the daily stock price and consumed with quarterly earnings targets at the expense of being good stewards of the business, you can imagine Drucker shaking his head in disappointment . “The most critical management job is to balance short-term and long-term,” Drucker said, adding that a “one-sided emphasis” on the former is “deleterious and dangerous.” Ultimately, he added, deciding “whether a business should be run for short-term results or with a focus on the long term is . . . a question of values. Financial analysts believe that businesses can be run for both simultaneously. Successful businesspeople know better.”
11. When a number of laborers take their own lives at the sprawling Hon Hai Precision Industry factory in China, it is a tragic reminder of Drucker ’s fateful observation that, while work “is impersonal and objective . . . working is done by a human being. . . . As the old human relations tag has it, ‘One cannot hire a hand; the whole man always comes with it.’”
12. When Intel and General Electric form a jointly owned company to serve the home healthcare market, it ’s as if they’ve first consulted Drucker’s 1999 book, Management Challenges for the 21st Century. “ Business growth and business expansion . . . will increasingly not be based on mergers and acquisitions or even on starting new, wholly owned businesses,” Drucker wrote. “They will increasingly have to be based on alliances, partnerships, joint ventures” and other such collaborative arrangements.
13. When executives at Bank of America decide to systematically go through nearly every part of the business and diagnose what to sell, what to revamp and where to invest capital and resources to meet customer needs for the long haul, they are, in effect, performing what Drucker called a “Business X-Ray.” This is a process that “enables us, indeed forces us, to allocate resources to results in the existing business,” Drucker explained. “But it also makes it possible for us to determine how much is needed to create the business of tomorrow. … It enables us to turn innovative intentions into innovative performance.”
14. And when Wal-Mart teams up with American Public University so that the retailer ’s employees can receive course credit—equivalent to as much as 45 percent of what it takes to earn a college degree—for corporate training and “on-the-job learning,” you can bet that Drucker would have been fascinated by the potential to combine thinking and doing this way. “ The intellectual’s world, unless counterbalanced by the manager, becomes one in which everybody ‘does his own thing’ but nobody achieves anything,” Drucker wrote. “The manager's world, unless counterbalanced by the intellectual, becomes the stultifying bureaucracy of the ‘Organization Man.’ But if the two balance each other, there can be creativity and order, fulfillment and mission.”
15. You ’ll find these--and dozens more such stories--fleshed out and fully explored in What Would Drucker Do Now? And along the way, you ’ll discover why, as Tom Peters, put it: “Drucker’s works . . . are the tracts that launched the ‘practice of management’ as we know it to this day—and as we will know it for decades to come.”
Editor's Notes
Peter Drucker has been described as “ the man who invented management. ” And yet, shortly before he died in 2005, Drucker told a reporter, “ I consider it quite likely that three years after my death my name will be of absolutely no advantage. ”
In other words, Drucker was suggesting that he—and, by extension, his ideas and ideals—would quickly fade away.
On this point, of course, the normally prescient Drucker couldn ’ t have been more wrong. His principles and practices continue to resonate today—as illustrated in this new book, What Would Drucker Do Now? , by Rick Wartzman, executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. A compendium of Wartzman ’ s popular online columns for Bloomberg Businessweek, What Would Drucker Do Now? ties insights gleaned from Peter Drucker ’ s 39 books and countless essays to some of the hottest issues and events dominating today ’ s headlines.
The result is what Warren Bennis has described as “ a tapestry of ideas drawn from Wartzman ’ s observations and personal experiences, woven together with the wisdom of the most important management thinker of this or any other age. ” Why does this mind meld work so well? And why does Drucker ’ s body of work remain so relevant five years after his death and more than 70 years after he started writing?
First, Drucker ’ s work is timeless. Kenneth Wilson, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and education reformer, once remarked that as Newton was to mathematics, Darwin was to biology, and Einstein was to physics, Drucker was to our understanding of organizations and society. But, second, Drucker ’ s work is also timely—remarkably so when you consider how much of it was formulated a half-century ago. Examples abound, and they ’ re illuminated throughout What Would Drucker Do Now?
When Cisco Systems, the giant computer networking equipment maker, decides to stop manufacturing the Flip camcorder so it can concentrate on its core business, it ’ s taking a page right from Drucker ’ s book on smart growth. “ A business actually grows if it sloughs off activities which do not contribute, ” Drucker declared. “ Such activities only drain. They impede the true growth potential. ”
When the new chief executive of Time Inc. shakes up the magazine publisher and is then fired after just five months on the job, you have to believe that he would have been wise to listen to Drucker ’ s dictum that leaders must tread carefully when seeking to change things. “ There is indeed a need to change deeply ingrained habits in a good many organizations, ” Drucker wrote. But trying to impose a new culture is not the way to get there. “ Culture—no matter how defined—is singularly persistent, ” he asserted. “ In fact, changing behavior works only if it can be based on the existing ‘ culture. ’”
When Burger King sees its business decline after focusing almost exclusively on young male customers, you can practically hear Drucker telling executives at the fast-food chain that they ’ ve forgotten to pay attention to another essential group: their “ noncustomers. ”“ Even the biggest enterprise (other than a government monopoly) has many more noncustomers than it has customers, ” Drucker wrote, noting that hardly any companies supply even 30 percent of a given market. “ And yet very few institutions know anything about the noncustomers—very few of them even know that they exist, let alone know who they are. And even fewer know why they are not customers. ”
When managers at Procter & Gamble, Netflix, Intuit and other companies engage in various forms of collaborative research and open innovation, you can picture Drucker applauding them for figuring out how to reach beyond their organization ’ s own walls and bring in fresh ideas from the outside. “ The outside, the area of results, is much less accessible than the inside, ” Drucker wrote. “ The central problem of executives in the large organization is their insulation from the outside. What today ’ s organization therefore needs are synthetic sense organs for the outside. ”
When executives at Lehman Brothers become preoccupied with the daily stock price and consumed with quarterly earnings targets at the expense of being good stewards of the business, you can imagine Drucker shaking his head in disappointment. “ The most critical management job is to balance short-term and long-term, ” Drucker said, adding that a “ one-sided emphasis ” on the former is “ deleterious and dangerous. ” Ultimately, he added, deciding “ whether a business should be run for short-term results or with a focus on the long term is . . . a question of values. Financial analysts believe that businesses can be run for both simultaneously. Successful businesspeople know better. ”
When a number of laborers take their own lives at the sprawling Hon Hai Precision Industry factory in China, it is a tragic reminder of Drucker ’ s fateful observation that, while work “ is impersonal and objective . . . working is done by a human being. . . . As the old human relations tag has it, ‘ One cannot hire a hand; the whole man always comes with it. ’”
When Intel and General Electric form a jointly owned company to serve the home healthcare market, it ’ s as if they ’ ve first consulted Drucker ’ s 1999 book, Management Challenges for the 21st Century. “ Business growth and business expansion . . . will increasingly not be based on mergers and acquisitions or even on starting new, wholly owned businesses, ” Drucker wrote. “ They will increasingly have to be based on alliances, partnerships, joint ventures ” and other such collaborative arrangements.
When executives at Bank of America decide to systematically go through nearly every part of the business and diagnose what to sell, what to revamp and where to invest capital and resources to meet customer needs for the long haul, they are, in effect, performing what Drucker called a “ Business X-Ray. ” This is a process that “ enables us, indeed forces us, to allocate resources to results in the existing business, ” Drucker explained. “ But it also makes it possible for us to determine how much is needed to create the business of tomorrow. … It enables us to turn innovative intentions into innovative performance. ”
And when Wal-Mart teams up with American Public University so that the retailer ’ s employees can receive course credit—equivalent to as much as 45 percent of what it takes to earn a college degree—for corporate training and “ on-the-job learning, ” you can bet that Drucker would have been fascinated by the potential to combine thinking and doing this way. “ The intellectual ’ s world, unless counterbalanced by the manager, becomes one in which everybody ‘ does his own thing ’ but nobody achieves anything, ” Drucker wrote. “ The manager's world, unless counterbalanced by the intellectual, becomes the stultifying bureaucracy of the ‘ Organization Man. ’ But if the two balance each other, there can be creativity and order, fulfillment and mission. ”
You ’ ll find these--and dozens more such stories--fleshed out and fully explored in What Would Drucker Do Now? And along the way, you ’ ll discover why, as Tom Peters, put it: “ Drucker ’ s works . . . are the tracts that launched the ‘ practice of management ’ as we know it to this day—and as we will know it for decades to come. ”