Peter Drucker: 1909-2005

Category: Editorial

How do you get to ninety something without growing world-weary, asks Fortune Magazine about Peter Drucker. Drucker has been the thinker and writer that has guided management practice for more than half a century. He published his first book in 1939 and his last Harvard Business Review article in 2004. Even then, frail with poor hearing and failing sight, he continued to speak at conferences. He is a role model to us all.

He was the father of modern management. "Management is the organ of institutions...the organ that converts a mob into an organisation, and human efforts into performance." He disdained the modern vogue for exalting leadership. His reasoning was that: "The three greatest leaders of the 20th century were Hitler, Stalin and Mao. If that's leadership, I want no part of it."

If Alfred Sloan created a centralised model at General Motors, Drucker studied GM and, in his book "The Concept of the Corporation", helped create the move towards decentralisation. He boasted that the book "had an immediate impact on American business, on public service institutions, on government agencies – and none on General Motors."

As well as decentralisation he also promoted the empowerment of workers and the concept of the knowledge worker.

He is perhaps most famous for inventing management by objectives. He emphasised the importance of managers and corporations setting clear long-term objectives and then translating those long term objectives into more immediate goals, and then allowing their employees to work out ways of achieving those goals.

In more recent times, his contribution has been in the relationship between business corporations and voluntary organisations – what each can learn from the other.

Peter Drucker died on 11^th November, just short of his 96^th birthday. He wrote about 40 books, the last of which "The Effective Executive in Action" will not be published until January. If you work in an organisation or with managers, think of Drucker. If you are feeling your age, think of Drucker!

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