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The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management (Paperback)
by Peter F. Drucker
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Management |
| Market price: ¥ 208.00
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¥ 158.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
A truly essential reading of Peter Drucker and a good way to start Drucker. |
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Author: Peter F. Drucker
Publisher: Collins, Reprint edition
Pub. in: July, 2003
ISBN: 006093574X
Pages: 368
Measurements: 8.0 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00024
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- MSL Picks -
This book is by far one of those that should be on the 'must read' list for any future entrepreneurs. The compilation of the management concepts summarizes the major points of his more popular books in one single volume.
The most useful information in the book is where he emphasizes it is managements responsibility to capitalize on the strengths and work around the weaknesses of the 'knowledge worker.'
This is very similar to the material I've read in Marcus Buckingham's Now, Discover Your Strengths and First, Break All the Rules. Drucker, however, takes a more intellectual approach to this concept.
In my reading of several books about entrepreneurship, this theme of 'capitalizing on the strengths' has been an important contributor to the success of many businesses.
It is clear to me that Drucker's themes on capitalizing on strengths, being a contributor, and overall personal mastery are concepts that should be in the DNA of the enterprise to insure growth and success.
I discerned from his teachings that these psychological concepts of management and culture are sometimes lost in our profit-centered corporate culture. Having an excellent product is one thing, but it is the people behind the product that provides the sustainable competitive advantage.
For any aspiring entrepreneur, I would recommend embracing Drucker's management philosophies, and that serious thought should be given about the culture you want to establish BEFORE your start mapping out your business plan. (From quoting William Green, USA)
Target readers:
Executives, managers, entrepreneurs, professionals, government and nonprofit leaders, and MBAs.
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Peter F. Drucker was considered one of management's top thinkers. As the author of more than 35 books, his ideas have had an enormous impact on shaping the modern corporation. In 2002, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. During his lifetime, Drucker was a writer, teacher, philosopher, reporter, consultant, and professor at the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University.
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From the Publisher:
Father of modern management, social commentator, and preeminent business philosopher, Peter F. Drucker has been analyzing economics and society for more than 60 years. Now for readers everywhere who are concerned with the ways that management practices and principles affect the performance of the organization, individuals, and society, there is The Essential Peter Drucker – an invaluable compilation of management essentials from the works of a management legend.
Containing 26 selections, The Essential Peter Drucker covers the basic principles and concerns of management and its problems, challenges, and opportunities, giving managers, executives, and professionals the tools to perform the tasks that that the economy and society of tomorrow will demand of them.
The first selection of Drucker's management work from The Practice of Management (1954) to Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1999), this book offers, in Drucker's words, "a coherent and fairly comprehensive introduction to management (and) gives us an overview of my works on management and answers a question I have been asked again and again: which of my writings are essential?"
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To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change. But the very meaning of the task has changed, if only because the performance of management has converted the workforce from one composed largely of unskilled laborers to one of highly educated knowledge workers.
One important advance in the discipline and practice of management is that both now embrace entrepreneurship and innovation. A sham fight these days pits "management" against "entrepreneurship" as adversaries, if not as mutually exclusive. That's like saying that the fingering hand and the bow hand of the violinist are "adversaries" or "mutually exclusive". Both are always needed and at the same time. And both have to be coordinated and work together. And existing organization, whether a business, a church, a labor union, or a hospital, goes down fast if it does not innovate. Conversely, any new organization, whether a business, a church, a labor union, or a hospital, collapses if it does not manage. Not to innovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing organizations. Not to know how to manage is the single largest reason for the failures of new ventures.
Yet few management books have paid attention to entrepreneurship and innovation. One reason is that during the period after World War II when most of those books were written, managing the existing rather than innovating the new and different was the dominant task. During this period most institutions developed along lines laid down 30 or 50 years earlier. This has now changed dramatically. We have entered an era of innovation, and it is by no means confined to "high-tech" or to technology generally – maybe of greater importance and have much greater impact than any discipline of entrepreneurship and innovation. It is clearly a part of management and rests, indeed, on well-known and tested management principles. It applies to both existing organizations and new ventures, and to both business and nonbusiness institutions, including government.
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But what is management? Is it a bag of techniques and tricks? A bundle of analytical tools like those taught in business school? These are important, to be sure, just as thermometer and anatomy are important to the physician. But the evolution and history of management – its success as well as its problems – tech that management is, above all else, based on a very few, essential principles. To be specific:
- Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. This is what organization is all about, and it is the reason that management is the critical, determining factor. These days, practically all of us work for a managed institution, large or small, business or nonbusiness. We depend on management for our livelihoods. And our ability to contribute to so society also depends as much on the management of the organization for which we work as it does on our own skills, dedication, and effort.
- Because management deals with the integration of people in a common venture, it is deeply embedded in culture. What managers do in West Germany, in the United Kingdom, in the US, in Japan, or in Brazil is exactly the same. How they do it may be quite different. Thus one of the basic challenges managers in a developing country face is to find and identify those parts of their own tradition, history, and culture that can be used as management builds blocks. The difference between Japan's economic success and India's relative backwardness is largely explained by the fact that Japanese managers were able to plant imported management concepts in their own cultural soil and make them grow.
- Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shard values. Without such commitment there is no enterprise; there is only a mob. The enterprise must have simple, clear, and unifying objectives. The mission of the organization has to be clear enough and big enough to provide common vision. The goals that embody it have to be clear, public, and constantly reaffirmed. Management's first job is to think through, set, and exemplify those objectives, values, and goals.
- Every enterprise is composed of people with different skills and knowledge doing many different kind of work. It must be built on communication and on individual responsibility/ all members need to think through what they aim to accomplish – and make sure that their associates know and understand that aim. All have to think through what they owe to others – and make sure that others understand. All have to think through what they in turn need from others – and make sure that others know what is expected of them.
- Neither the quantity of output nor the "bottom line" is by itself an adequate measure of the performance of management and enterprise. Market standing, innovation, productivity, development of people, quality, financial results – all are crucial to an organization's performance and to its survival….
- Finally, the single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that results only exist only on the outside. The result of a business is a satisfied customer. The result of a hospital is a healed patient. The result of a school is a student who has learned something and puts it to work 10 years later. Inside an enterprise, there are only costs.
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| View all 8 comments |
Fortune magazine (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-25 00:00>
Drucker's idea continue to display a force and resonance that leave him pretty much in a class by himself. It's impossible to read the man without learning a lot. |
Harvard Business Review (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-25 00:00>
His writings are landmarks of managerial profession. |
Serge Steenskiste (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-25 00:00>
The Essential Drucker is an excellent introduction to the Peter Drucker's writings on management. Some readers, understandably, complain that the book is so general on some topics, that its practical value is sometimes limited. Ultimately, this recapitulation of Drucker's essential thoughts about management is an invitation to rethink some commonly accepted views on management. If one needs convincing on this point, consider the following ten examples:
1) Contrary to popular belief, management and entrepreneurship are not opposite, but complimentary (pg. 8, 136-143, and 161-188). An established company that does not innovate, is regularly doomed to what Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction. As Clayton Christensen demonstrates brilliantly in The Innovator's Dilemma, innovation is sometimes not even enough to avert business failure. Similarly, a poorly managed start-up will often end up broken (pg. 144-160).
2) One of the three tasks of management is managing social impacts and social responsibilities. The recent wave of corporate scandals unfortunately illustrates this point too well, often with disastrous consequences for their authors and the stakeholders who have a key interest in the success of the organization (pg. 16-20). Profit is not the explanation, cause or rationale of business behavior and business decisions, but rather the test of their validity as Drucker states (pg. 18).
3) Neither is there a separate ethics of business, nor one is needed. The ethics of responsibility is plain, everyday honesty. The issue is one of moral values and moral education of the individual. As Drucker bluntly points out, all that is needed is to mete stiff punishments to those - whether business executives or others - who yield to temptation (pg. 63-64).
4) Few organizations reach at least 30% of all potential customers in any market. And yet few organizations know anything about the non-customers (pg. 85). To start changing this, organizations have to understand what existing and potential customers really value in a product or service. This desired value is not necessarily what the supplier sells (pg. 86, 111, 148, 186).
5) Each manager should have the information he needs to measure his own performance and should receive it soon enough to make any necessary changes. Yet in most organizations, the results of the audits do not go to the managers audited, but to the top management who then confronts these managers with the audit of their operations (pg. 121-122). Management by self-control is more productive than management by domination to achieve excellence.
6) Most executives do not perform very well when they promote or hire. By all accounts, only one-third of such decisions turn out to be right; one-third are minimally effective; one-third are outright failures. In no other area of management is such dismissal performance tolerated (pg. 127). Drucker also reminds his readers that it is not intuitively obvious to most people that a new and different job requires a new and different behavior (pg. 132, 211).
7) Few people realize that many people make decisions within organizations. Knowledge workers who are considered partners rather than employees, can only be helped. The close supervision of knowledge workers is often illusory because of their unique expertise. Only effectiveness that focuses on contribution, transforms intelligence, imagination and knowledge into results (pg. 192-193, 196, 207).
8) Warm feelings and pleasant words are meaningless, if there is no achievement in what is, after all, a work-focused and task-focused relationship. An occasional rough word will not disturb a relationship that produces results and accomplishments for all concerned according to Drucker (pg. 213-214).
9) Many business policy statements contain no action commitment. No wonder that the people in the organization tend to view these statements cynically because they do not reflect top management's true intentions (pg. 249).
10) Leadership has little to do with leadership qualities and even less to do with charisma. Leadership is a means that is mundane, unromantic and boring. Its essence is performance (pg. 268). The key characteristics of leadership are hard work, clear and legitimate goals, responsibility, trust and integrity (pg. 269-271). |
M. Strong, USA (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-25 00:00>
Peter Drucker is the father of modern management theory and has never been equaled or surpassed in terms of his theories or their usability. The problem with Drucker is that over the course of sixty highly productive years, he's put out more books than it is practical for almost anyone to read. This book addresses that issue for those of us who would like the best parts in one book.
The mark of the finest minds is the ability to clearly and simply articulate ideas that make you wonder "why didn't I think of that?" Once stated, Drucker's ideas are so obvious, but I almost never find any that I came up with on my own and have never put the ideas into words as concisely as he does time after time.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in running a better business. My copy is dog-eared, underlined, marked-up and otherwise worn. |
View all 8 comments |
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