Peter F. Drucker
Peter F. Drucker's name is synonymous with management. His writings consistently offer rich and practical insights served up in a soufflé of good style.
Drucker sought to define, clarify, and systematize management practices so that they could be taught, learned, and practiced.
He was once asked if he had "invented" management, which was obviously something people had been doing for years.
Drucker replied that his book The Practice of Management (1954) made it possible for people to learn how to manage, something that up to then, he said, only a few geniuses seem to be able to replicate.
"I sat down and made a discipline of it… Look,” Drucker added, "if you can't replicate something because you don't understand it, that it really hasn't been invented; it has only been done."
Slightly paraphrasing Drucker: The development of management as a discipline gives to today's executive a capacity to perform well beyond that of the ablest executive of 50 years ago, and enables the outstanding executive to achieve what the management genius of yesterday could hardly have dreamt of.
Putting Drucker Management Into Practice
Many CLN contributors have spent considerable time analyzing Drucker's insights, philosophy and prolific writings….and have thoughtfully and thoroughly explained the depth and subtlety of one of America's most remarkable minds.
More importantly, these Drucker disciples have illustrated, time and again, how to use Drucker's timeless principles and practices to achieve extraordinary management results.
We strongly suggest members of the Corporate Learning Network community consider essential thoughts derived from Peter F. Drucker. Then go straight to the source. And dig deep!
What Others Say About Drucker's Contributions
"Like many philosophers, he spoke in plain language that resonated with ordinary managers. Consequently, simple statements from him have influenced untold numbers of daily actions; they did mine over decades."- Andrew S. Grove, co-founder of Intel
"The world knows he was the greatest management thinker of the last century." - Jack Welch, former chairman of GE
"He was the creator and inventor of modern management." - Tom Peters, much celebrated management guru
"…{When} one feels so fully indebted to a distant master, and when what the master says needs frequent repetition and broad dissemination one feels compelled {to participate in this task}," - Ted Levitt, former editor of the Harvard Business Review and professor of marketing at the Harvard Business School
"Winston Churchill saved the free world, but Peter F. Drucker showed us how to make that free world work." - Jim Collins, best-selling author of Good to Great and co-author of Built to Last
"I always came away from our conversations with clear, fresh insights that I could apply to P&G's business and organization almost immediately."- A.G. Lafley, executive chairman of Procter & Gamble
The list of thankful leaders praising Peter F. Drucker's astonishing body of work is virtually endless.
Corporate Learning Network and its affiliated entities are not affiliated with, licensed or sponsored by, The Drucker 1996 Literary Works Trust, The Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito School of Management, or The Drucker Institute.
