Tips from the greatest business thinker of the 20th century

<sup>“The best way to predict the future is to create it!”

Peter F. Drucker</sup>

If you have not heard of a man like Peter Drucker , you know nothing about management and marketing. One of the most famous people in the field of management theory. He wrote dozens of books and an unimaginable number of articles published in the most famous business magazines. Today I offer to get acquainted with the translation of the article of one of his students.



Some people shine so brightly that they illuminate the near future. Peter Drucker was one of those people.



Drucker was one of the most influential business thinkers of the 20th century. Despite the fact that he wrote 39 books, most of what I know about him has nothing to do with his books. Almost everything is drawn from private conversations.

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For 10 years Peter Drucker was my mentor and friend. Our conversations with him, faxes and letters (he did not bother to start an e-mail) had a great influence on my thinking. I remember him as a brilliant, but surprisingly modest person.



I met Drucker in the mid-90s at his country house in Claremont. A tiny ranch on a small plot with furniture that looked like it was borrowed from the set of The Brady Bunch . The modesty of the place where he lived was in stark contrast to his guru status.



Many of our conversations can be compared with a walk through the magnificent library. So I learned a lot from the first hands. He has worked with various people and companies, from the president of the United States and leading industry leaders to cardinals and bishops.



What I learned from him for ten years, remains in my memory as a kind of manifesto of creating an extraordinary company and an equally unusual life. Here are some of his most memorable ideas.

Do not drive, but lead

Drucker had a problem with the concept of management of knowledge workers. He felt that management was seeking shared responsibility. He believed in the ability of direct implementers to make decisions. Leading role, according to Peter Drucker, involves providing opportunities for people by providing resources for success, rather than step-by-step instructions. If such a situation scares you, most likely the company is run by completely wrong people.

To keep good people, give them a chance ... on the moon

For 20 years I have built my company, we have not lost any of the eight people from the management and leading developers. We have enough pay, but these people are not with us because of this. Drucker taught me that people are being left with a challenge that allows them to go beyond their abilities to be a part of something bigger. This is Peter Diamandis calls the "lunar shot", the goal is so great that it creates a force of attraction to attract people to it and keeps them in its orbit. In addition, the test scare only those people that you already do not need.

Before you figure out how something should be done, ask why you should do it.

Peter Drucker highlighted a controversial issue using indicators of the industrial era in the post-industrial world. He felt that too often we ordered tasks without asking why there were any problems at all. One of the easiest, but important lessons learned by me, requires constant interest in the reasons for the appearance of the task before it starts. Drucker was a master at asking questions. For all the ten years that I knew him, I am not sure that he ever answered my directly asked question. Instead, he almost always rephrased or reformulated my questions. Strength test of generally accepted dogmas has always been his forte - he often called himself an “insult” who scolded people for a fee. He taught me never to be afraid and not to be ashamed to say, “I don’t know,” and to ask “why?” Before taking action.

If you're bored, it's your fault.

My mentor did not tolerate laziness and never stopped. I once asked him if he felt that it was time to slow down, then he was about ninety years old. The answer was - "it is difficult to work indifferent and without a goal." If you have a reason to work hard, then 24 hours a day will be enough. Despite this, he was equally passionate about other areas of his life, teaching, Japanese art and mentoring.

Treat your employees like volunteers

At first glance, complete heresy. Peter Drucker, completing his working career, worked a lot with non-profit and volunteer organizations. He tried to inculcate business acumen to non-commercial projects, while assuming that the opposite is true, and commercial organizations can learn a lot from volunteer projects. Volunteers who left workplaces at the end of the work day can always return if necessary. Now the predominant feature of the “generation Y” workers (born from 1981 to 1990) and the “generation Z” (born after 2000) is a deep sense of social purpose in their work, which was essentially predicted by Peter Drucker.

Discard the past

How do you manage to accelerate the pace of change? To this question, he carefully chose the words, replied - "by conscious refusal." One of my favorite quotes by Peter Drucker says: "The most difficult thing is to make sure that the corpse does not rot." Yes, this is not a very pleasant thought, but how often do companies keep their bright and wonderful past while the future passes by them?

Be modest

This is the last of Peter Drucker’s lessons I memorized. If there was anyone who had reason to boast and arrogance, it was him. Throughout his life, he experienced more than a hundred other men and women, and yet there was not a drop of arrogance in him. He had no reason to mess with me, but he still taught me.



The last letter I received from him was an answer to my letter of thanks for guiding me on the right path. Answering, he wrote: “Tom, even if I miss nine-tenths, written by you, it's still too much!” It was Peter Drucker - brilliant, amiable and modest.



Follow his lead.