100 Years of Drucker

Had he lived to this day, Peter F. Drucker would have turned 100 this week. A host of events have been organised worldwide to commemorate the Drucker centenary. There have been numerous tributes to Drucker from numerous sources: Havard Business Review put him on the cover of its November issue and asked "What would Peter do?"; The Economist pays him fulsome praise in it's latest Schumpeter column; The Wall Street Journal assesses his lasting legacy; Inc surveys some of his contributions from A to Z.

But the simplest, sincerest, most personal and most poignant tribute that I have come across is from one of Drucker's countless students, a man whose life was literally (and positively) transformed by his contact with Drucker. Drucker's deep humanity and wisdom shines through in this story. But I'll let Opoku Acheampong tell us the story for himself.

Alcoholics Synonymous

From Chapter 3 ("Reclaiming Your Creativity") of Creative Design of Products and Systems (John Wiley & Sons, 2009):

A man comes to a bar and orders three glasses of beer, sits alone, and drinks from the three glasses one sip at a time. the bartender goes to him and says: " Sir, why don't you order one glass at a time so that your beer will be cool and fresh?" The man says: "I have two brothers that are not here. We used to drink together all the time. I am doing this as if they were here, drinking with me." This goes on until a few weeks later, when the man comes in and orders only two glasses. The bartender later goes to him and says: "I am really sorry for the loss of one of your brothers. You must really miss him." The man replies: "Oh, no. They are fine. It is that I have just decided to quit drinking."

Who said engineering textbooks have to be boring?