Brent Schlender writes an article for Fortune in which 'Peter Drucker Sets Us Straight.' The following is a excerpt from that article, the balance is available by 'subscription' to Fortune's online service.
...You can always count on Peter Drucker to provide a new way of looking at things. After all, he is the man who first recognized that management is a discipline worthy of deep and formal study. Long before anyone else - in the early 1950s, no less - he predicted how computer technology would one day thoroughly transform business. In 1961 he presciently called attention to the rise of Japan as an industrial power, and two decades later he warned of its impending economic stagnation. And we can thank him for coining the concepts of "privatization," "knowledge workers," and "management by objective."
At 94, Drucker is still full of insights that seem to elude others, and he is as opinionated as ever. His interests range from economics to psychology to philosophy to opera to Japanese art; his experiences include consulting with literally hundreds of companies, governments, small businesses, churches, universities, hospitals, arts organizations, and charities. To this day, leaders of all stripes make the pilgrimage to California to learn from the master, who continues to lecture at the management school that bears his name at Claremont Graduate University...
K-Collector Topics: Brent Simmons knowledge work Writing Peter DruckerHis autobiogrpahy, title escpes me, is a great read about a different era in investment banking.
Drucker was a young intern at a boutique. The firm had a tradition - the partnership mistress -who had to be kept at the standard that she had become accustomed to be by the junior partner. As partners moved up, so the job of looking after the mistress moved down to the youngest poarter. Drucker muses that at one time she had been young and beautiful but was now like your great granny. Not your PC environment.
One of the senior partners was the world's largest arbitrager in Chrysler stock. Drucker, being a keener, did some research and called on the great man with some information about the car market. Imagine Drucker's shock when it became clear that the man did not know or care that Chrysler made cars! He only traded momentum and flows and had no interest in the underlying activity of the firm.
Ah those were the days! Yet Drucker is still one of the most immediate commentators of life in business
Posted by: Rob Paterson at January 5, 2004 04:38 PM94 and more opinions than ever - something to aspire to! here i am rob - barely able to read your comment as my 'backlit' lcd screen went zzzzzzzzt and i can only see ghost images! more later...
Posted by: judith at January 5, 2004 06:01 PMI find your work enjoyable and informative.
Posted by: Patricia Anderson at January 22, 2004 11:39 PMI find your work enjoyable and informative.
Posted by: Patricia Anderson at January 22, 2004 11:39 PMThe book he wishes he had written is the one most of Corporate America needs the most, Managing Ignorance. I got a real kick from that comment!
Posted by: Kevin Colbert at January 30, 2004 07:20 PM