Rereading Drucker

Citation

Fahey, L. (2009), "Rereading Drucker", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 37 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/sl.2009.26137faa.001

Rereading Drucker

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Strategy & Leadership, Volume 37, Issue 6

The centennial of Peter Drucker’s birth in November inspired me to take a tour down memory lane and reacquaint myself with a number of his books and articles. It was a revelatory experience, and I’d like to share just three of the many reflections I had while rereading Drucker.

First, I now believe every manager should resolve to read one Drucker book every few months and make notes specific to the key issues, challenges, and possibilities, he or she faces. If you do, I guarantee that you will be amazed at how The Age of Discontinuity (1969), or Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1985) or Managing for the Future (1992) offer insights on almost every page relevant to the pesky problems and nagging dilemmas that plague you today – whether you are a manager, consultant, professor, public sector employee, or policy wonk. Consider the following gem in Innovation and Entrepreneurship (page 30): “… there is no such thing as a ‘resource’ until man finds a use for something … and then endows it with economic value.” How many management teams today have forgotten this critical truth?

Second, perhaps even more mind boggling is to revisit Drucker’s early work: The Concept of the Corporation (1946), The Practice of Management (1954) and Managing for Results (1964) and conclude how the world inside and outside your average corporation might be so different and better were the lessons jumping from every page heeded and acted upon. The Concept of the Corporation, the first book dedicated to “understanding the business enterprise,” used General Motors as its case study. Although written 63 years ago, it still rattles with penetrating observations that, if followed, might well have saved GM from bankruptcy, its current fate.

And this book has other prophetic warnings for those now struggling to avoid a repeat of practices that may have contributed to the current recession. Speaking of risk, vulnerabilities and misunderstanding the future, Drucker wryly noted (page 191): “What applies to a stationary economy applies with doubled force to an economy in expansion.” This timeless admonition could have alerted modern managers to beware of the surprises lurking in recent innovation-based economies – think Internet bubble and the current financial engineering scandal.

My third surprise after rereading Drucker was that, over a lifetime of contemplating the evolving business world, he was able to maintain his focus on a few core themes that the modern manager confronts every day. These include: the needs of the customer; the need to anticipate change; how and why change is the only source of innovative customer solutions; knowledge as the ultimate driver of societal wealth creation; the notion that the corporation is but an instrument in the service of humanity. Finally, there’s one Druckerism that I think should be framed on the wall of every corporate manager: “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.” Thanks, Pete.

Liam FaheyLiam Fahey, a former editor and now a contributing editor of Strategy & Leadership, is author of Competitors (Wiley, 1999). Based in Boston, he is executive director of Leadership Forum Inc., an executive leadership education company (Liam.Fahey@leadershipforuminc.com).