I was sad to read in the New York Times that Peter Drucker had passed away. I've had the good fortune to meet and work with many wonderful people in my career, but I put the time I spent with Peter Drucker as some of the most cherished.
I was hired in 1996 to help Peter Drucker's Foundation develop and produce an e-learning program on non-profit leadership. This entailed spending time with Peter at his home in California where we mapped out the design of the program and produced a video with Peter's thoughts on leadership based on leaders with whom he has worked.
I have read a number of remembrances about Peter Drucker and they all recognize his giant intellect and his immense contribution to our understanding of business and economics. But what they do not capture is how much fun he was. He had a wonderful sense of humor and was a great raconteur. Given all the interesting people he had worked with in his life, he was full of wonderful stories. His home was modest but lovely, filled with books and art from his collection of Japanese art. Peter was amazing. He would take on a three-year intellectual project–something serious that he could pursue for an extended period of time. He was in the midst of reading (re-reading) all of the great 19th novels. So we talked about Balzac and Trollope and Turgenev.
Peter Drucker continues to be an influence in my life and work. In a paper I delivered last year in Taiwan, I referenced Drucker's work in his last book, “Management Challenges for the 21st century:”
Peter Drucker, in his book, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, identifies knowledge worker productivity as the
“biggest of the 21st century management challenges.” His view of the consequences of ignoring the primacy knowledge is Draconian:
In the developed countries it is their first survival requirement. In no other way can the developed countries hope to maintain themselves, let alone to maintain their leadership and standard of living…. The only possible advantage developed countries can hope to have is in the supply of people prepared, educated, and trained for knowledge work…. Fifty years from now—if not much sooner—the leadership in the world economy will have moved to the countries and to the industries that have most systematically and most successfully raised knowledge-worker productivity.
He goes on to say that knowledge workers will have to manage themselves:
“They will have to place themselves where they can make the greatest contribution; they will have to learn to develop themselves…. They will have to learn how and when to change what they do, how they do it and when they do it.”
Drucker believes:
“managing oneself is a REVOLUTION in human affairs. It requires new and unprecedented things from the individual and especially from the knowledge worker. For in effect it demands that each knowledge worker think and behave like a Chief Executive Officer.”
This is a 180-degree shift away from how we were raised to think and work. But it is at the heart of where we are taking the Otter Group now. We believe that we need to learn to manage ourselves and in the process, re-learn how to learn. Everybody is a CEO these days–or at least everybody must think and behave like one. Thus the title of the book I am working on, “Everbody's a CEO, ” is directly attributable to Peter Drucker.
Although I had not seen Peter Drucker in many years, he has made an indelible difference in my life.
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