Peter F. Drucker

Drucker, Peter Ferdinand.

Born November 19, 1909, in Vienna, Austria; Died November 11, 2005, in Claremont, California. He described himself simply as a writer, a teacher and a consultant. There must be precious few autobiographical statements quite as wide of the mark as this one. Not that anything in the statement is false--quite the opposite. Drucker's skill as a writer, his power as a teacher, and his wisdom as a consultant, were justly renowned. No, he certainly was a great writer, a great teacher and a great consultant.

But Drucker was far more than that. Incalculably more.

Peter F. Drucker was, and is, the single most important management and social thinker of the last 100 years. And not only are his ideas important, they are also deeply influential.

Drucker is to management and social philosophy what Shakespeare is to the English Language. It is literally impossible to escape his influence--that influence is always there, whether one realises it or not, or agrees with it or not.

Drucker wrote 38 books. According to my latest count, I have read 25 of them. I have also read numerous other writings by and on Drucker.

If I had to choose one book by Drucker to recommend to someone new to the corpus, it would have to be The Effective Executive, first published in 1966. Despite the fact that the book is 40 years old, it has lost none of its power, freshness and relevance. I've lost count of the number of times I've read this book. It's the sort of book you have to keep and read (not just refer to) over and over again. I intend to devote several of my upcoming posts to discussing the ideas presented in this great book.

If I had to choose one article by Drucker to recommend to someone, it would be Managing Oneself, first published in 1999 in the Harvard Business Review.

Drucker is one of the most quotable thinkers you'll ever encounter. Here are just three of my favourite Drucker quotations to illustrate my point:

"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said."

""I never predict. I just look out the window and see what's visible—but not yet seen."

"[Drucker was asked] Looking back on your career, is there anything you wish you had done that you weren't able to do?

[Drucker answered] Yes, quite a few things. There are many books I could have written that are better than the ones I actually wrote. My best book would have been one titled Managing Ignorance, and I'm very sorry I didn't write it. "

That's quite an answer coming from the man who coined the terms "knowledge work" and "knowledge worker", which underly the notions of the "knowledge economy" and "knowledge management".

His work is full of such gems.

Drucker's gone, but his influence will endure.

A couple of extra goodies:

-- You can hear the great man himself in this radio interview that he gave in late 2004.

-- Drucker's grandson writes an interesting blog.