Peter Drucker is an influential author, educator, management consultant, and has been called the founder of modern management. With that moniker, you would think that he started writing and discussing management early on and rested on his laurels.
Drucker wrote his first book at 30, but it wasn’t until he was 33 that his career as a business writer and thinking started to take shape. He started working at GM, at the time, one of the largest companies in the world. He attended every board meeting, interviewed staff, and considered decision making processes over 2 years. The outcome as a book, Concepts of the Corporation.
In this book, Drucker suggested that GM might need to reconsider a host of their long-standing policies and processes. The book and its recommendations were not viewed lightly by the GM’s chairman, Alfred Sloan.
He would go on to write many books about management, business, and entrepreneurship. He wrote more books in his last 30 years of life than he did in his first 60.
Druckers Key Ideas
In his book The Practice of Management (1954), he suggested that a company’s main focus should be to serve its customers. Profit was just an outcome of serving but was required to keep the business going.
In Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1974), he discussed that people and organisations tend to stick with yesterday’s successes rather than understanding when they are no longer relevant or helpful.
In The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About your Organization (2008), he along with fellow authors raised the point of having respect for the workers and that they were an asset, not a liability. That employees were a valuable resource and that managers should help them do a good job and get out of their way to do it.
What can we learn?
Drucker didn’t start out as an expert in management. He didn’t start out a prolific writer. What he did have is curiosity.
He wanted to understand how things worked. Why some areas of a business worked more effectively than other areas. Why some businesses were better than other businesses.
Drucker wasn’t afraid to question the status quo and to challenge the powerful.
It is not too late to learn a new skill. To try a new thing. To test the water in a new field.
You never know, you might change the world.
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe 