Scandals nothing new to business guru
LOS ANGELES — At the age of 92, management guru Peter Drucker has seen it all before — market meltdowns, corporate accounting scandals, unethical behavior in the executive suite.
After all, he began working as a business journalist on his 20th birthday, Nov. 19, 1929 — less than a month after the great crash on Wall Street.
"Your first question, whether there has ever been anything like the present unfolding of scandal after scandal? This is normal," Drucker says at the start of an interview. "This is the fourth time in my life that I have been through it, and they are all alike."
Drucker's professional life has spanned the Great Depression and World War II through the boom times of the '50s and early '60s to the stock market bubble of the '90s and this year's corporate scandals.
Along the way, Drucker has created a body of work on management that has earned him a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, which President Bush will present to him later this month. In announcing the award, the White House described Drucker as "the world's foremost pioneer of management theory" and champion of such ideas as "privatization, management by objective and decentralization."
Drucker sees the current plight of some once-mighty companies as the latest example of a cycle he has seen time and again.
"These are businesses that start legitimately and overreach themselves, and then they begin to play games," he says.
"It all begins with the management having a brilliant idea," he says. "The brilliant ones are always the ones who get caught. And the things they invent, by the way, always become the successes of the next period — cleansed of their excesses and their risks."
Speaking the truth to power
Warren Bennis, a business professor at the University of Southern California and one of the world's top authorities on leadership, has known Drucker for 50 years. "It can't be overemphasized that he made management respectable both as a profession and as a field of study," he says. "Peter's question is always: for what? Leadership for what? Teamwork for what?"
"What makes him so wonderful," Bennis says, "is that he's a prophet without anything to sell. He speaks truth to power."
Even in his 10th decade of life, Drucker is still speaking out, still lecturing and writing. And he still has no plans to retire (nor does his wife, who "is about the same age and still plays tournament tennis — and wins," he says).
At age 92:
"If you want to diagram my work, he explains, "in the center is writing, then comes consulting, then comes teaching. I've never been primarily an academic. I like to teach because that's the way I learn."
Drucker still speaks with a heavy German accent, reflective of his native Vienna. He settled in the USA in 1937, working as a journalist for British and American publications, and later became a professor and a consultant. He has written nearly three dozen books and countless articles. His first book, The End of Economic Man, published in 1939, was favorably reviewed by Winston Churchill.
Drucker's 1954 book, The Practice of Management, is considered one of the most important management works of all time, and he has introduced many key concepts into the world of business, such as management by objectives and the importance of knowledge workers.
John Flaherty, former dean of the business school at Pace University in New York, and author of Peter Drucker: Shaping the Managerial Mind, says Drucker is "still relevant because his fundamentals are still relevant there is no other thinker out there who has done a more clear job and better job on the fundamentals."
Flaherty acknowledges that reading and fully comprehending Drucker takes some effort: "As Dickens says: All learning is not fun; you have to dig in."
"I have more consulting than ever," Drucker says, "but I thought I had the most in non-profits. But it turned out I had an enormous amount of old, big-company clients coming back to me. European, Japanese and American; how to reposition themselves in the world economy."
Drucker describes himself as a "one-man organization."
"I don't even have a secretary," he says. "I just use a woman to do my typing, and I keep in touch with all my clients, even if I have no business with them for 20 years; they're still friends."
He especially likes working with small companies, "where you see results. My first client was General Motors; I started at the top and worked my way down."
One of Drucker's student success stories is Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., chairman of the House Rules Committee, who took his first classes from Drucker as an undergraduate at Claremont McKenna College.
Dreier says Drucker "has this tremendous grasp of history and the ability to take it and apply it to current day challenges. He's one of the most brilliant human beings I have ever known."
Nancy Baxter, regional investment manager for Wells Fargo in Pasadena, Calif., is a former Drucker student with an MBA from Claremont who is now pursuing her Ph.D. there.
She says that as a teacher, Drucker is "absolutely remarkable I've never seen him work off notes."
Gary Hamel, chairman of consultants Strategos, and co-author of a seminal business book, Competing for the Future, says Drucker has the rare ability to "blend breakthrough thinking with practical application. His single greatest contribution is to professionalize the work of management," Hamel says. "He is the rare individual who can bridge theory and the world of practice."
About Peter Drucker
Age: 92.
Family: Married 65 years; four children.
Place of birth: Vienna.
Education: LL.D. in international law from Frankfurt University.
Famous quotes:
"Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all."
"Because knowledge deteriorates rapidly unless it is used constantly, maintaining within an organization an activity that is used only intermittently guarantees incompetence."
Achievements: Claremont Graduate University named its graduate school of management after him in 1987; author of 33 books translated into more than a dozen languages; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Sources: Claremont Graduate University, USA TODAY research
Source:
USATODAY.com - Scandals nothing new to business guru
By Bruce Rosenstein, USA TODAY
By Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY
LINK:http://www.usatoday.com/money/general/2002/07/05/2002-07-05-drucker.htm
LOS ANGELES — At the age of 92, management guru Peter Drucker has seen it all before — market meltdowns, corporate accounting scandals, unethical behavior in the executive suite.
After all, he began working as a business journalist on his 20th birthday, Nov. 19, 1929 — less than a month after the great crash on Wall Street.
"Your first question, whether there has ever been anything like the present unfolding of scandal after scandal? This is normal," Drucker says at the start of an interview. "This is the fourth time in my life that I have been through it, and they are all alike."
Drucker's professional life has spanned the Great Depression and World War II through the boom times of the '50s and early '60s to the stock market bubble of the '90s and this year's corporate scandals.
Along the way, Drucker has created a body of work on management that has earned him a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, which President Bush will present to him later this month. In announcing the award, the White House described Drucker as "the world's foremost pioneer of management theory" and champion of such ideas as "privatization, management by objective and decentralization."
Drucker sees the current plight of some once-mighty companies as the latest example of a cycle he has seen time and again.
"These are businesses that start legitimately and overreach themselves, and then they begin to play games," he says.
"It all begins with the management having a brilliant idea," he says. "The brilliant ones are always the ones who get caught. And the things they invent, by the way, always become the successes of the next period — cleansed of their excesses and their risks."
Speaking the truth to power
Warren Bennis, a business professor at the University of Southern California and one of the world's top authorities on leadership, has known Drucker for 50 years. "It can't be overemphasized that he made management respectable both as a profession and as a field of study," he says. "Peter's question is always: for what? Leadership for what? Teamwork for what?"
"What makes him so wonderful," Bennis says, "is that he's a prophet without anything to sell. He speaks truth to power."
Even in his 10th decade of life, Drucker is still speaking out, still lecturing and writing. And he still has no plans to retire (nor does his wife, who "is about the same age and still plays tournament tennis — and wins," he says).
At age 92:
"If you want to diagram my work, he explains, "in the center is writing, then comes consulting, then comes teaching. I've never been primarily an academic. I like to teach because that's the way I learn."
Drucker still speaks with a heavy German accent, reflective of his native Vienna. He settled in the USA in 1937, working as a journalist for British and American publications, and later became a professor and a consultant. He has written nearly three dozen books and countless articles. His first book, The End of Economic Man, published in 1939, was favorably reviewed by Winston Churchill.
Drucker's 1954 book, The Practice of Management, is considered one of the most important management works of all time, and he has introduced many key concepts into the world of business, such as management by objectives and the importance of knowledge workers.
John Flaherty, former dean of the business school at Pace University in New York, and author of Peter Drucker: Shaping the Managerial Mind, says Drucker is "still relevant because his fundamentals are still relevant there is no other thinker out there who has done a more clear job and better job on the fundamentals."
Flaherty acknowledges that reading and fully comprehending Drucker takes some effort: "As Dickens says: All learning is not fun; you have to dig in."
"I have more consulting than ever," Drucker says, "but I thought I had the most in non-profits. But it turned out I had an enormous amount of old, big-company clients coming back to me. European, Japanese and American; how to reposition themselves in the world economy."
Drucker describes himself as a "one-man organization."
"I don't even have a secretary," he says. "I just use a woman to do my typing, and I keep in touch with all my clients, even if I have no business with them for 20 years; they're still friends."
He especially likes working with small companies, "where you see results. My first client was General Motors; I started at the top and worked my way down."
One of Drucker's student success stories is Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., chairman of the House Rules Committee, who took his first classes from Drucker as an undergraduate at Claremont McKenna College.
Dreier says Drucker "has this tremendous grasp of history and the ability to take it and apply it to current day challenges. He's one of the most brilliant human beings I have ever known."
Nancy Baxter, regional investment manager for Wells Fargo in Pasadena, Calif., is a former Drucker student with an MBA from Claremont who is now pursuing her Ph.D. there.
She says that as a teacher, Drucker is "absolutely remarkable I've never seen him work off notes."
Gary Hamel, chairman of consultants Strategos, and co-author of a seminal business book, Competing for the Future, says Drucker has the rare ability to "blend breakthrough thinking with practical application. His single greatest contribution is to professionalize the work of management," Hamel says. "He is the rare individual who can bridge theory and the world of practice."
About Peter Drucker
Age: 92.
Family: Married 65 years; four children.
Place of birth: Vienna.
Education: LL.D. in international law from Frankfurt University.
Famous quotes:
"Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all."
"Because knowledge deteriorates rapidly unless it is used constantly, maintaining within an organization an activity that is used only intermittently guarantees incompetence."
Achievements: Claremont Graduate University named its graduate school of management after him in 1987; author of 33 books translated into more than a dozen languages; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Sources: Claremont Graduate University, USA TODAY research
Source:
USATODAY.com - Scandals nothing new to business guru
By Bruce Rosenstein, USA TODAY
By Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY
LINK:http://www.usatoday.com/money/general/2002/07/05/2002-07-05-drucker.htm
