Whitehead once said that whole European philosophy is a
series of footnotes to Plato. Having studied hundreds of books on contemporary management
one may came to a conclusion that they consist of footnotes to Peter Drucker,
and his intellectual output encapsulated in "Management"
from 1970’s. Drucker is not only father of remark that business has two,
and only two basic functions: marketing and innovation, but also other essential
principles on managing teams and delivering work in productive way, which is
the first test of management’s competence.
It was Drucker who is said to invent society of
organizations depending on managers, who in the first place set objectives,
secondly organize, next motivate and communicate. Managers, says Drucker analyse,
appraise and interpret performance. Finally they develop people, including themselves.
Drucker gives a lot of clues on how to make wise decision. Becoming
part of top management you’ll constantly need to ask yourself the question “What
is our business, and what is not?”.
Drucker says, that the right answer are the results of
asking the right questions, and decisions are rarely choices between right and
wrong. They are at best a choices between “almost right” and “probably wrong”.
Drucker describes illuminating decision making stories, incl. those
when Sloan Jr said at one of GM top committees “Gentlemen I take we are
all in complete agreement to the decisions here - then I propose we postpone
further discussion on this matter until our next meeting, to give ourselves time
to develop disagreement or perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision
is all about”.
Drucker observed that top decisions are not made well by
acclamations. They are made well only if they are based on the clash of
conflicting views, dialogue between various point of view and choices between
different judgments. Does in not reminding you what we call an “open innovation”
approach today ?
Why else you should read Drucker ? You will learn from Management that the customer never buys
a product, but by definition the customer buys the “satisfaction of a want”,
and that the most productive innovations are products or services that create
new potential of satisfaction.
Drucker will explain you that spirit of performance in a
human organization is in fact an act of creation of energy, as company’s energy
output is larger than the sum of efforts put in, and that the purpose of
organization is to enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
In the end you’d like to set up great company, right?
