Peter Drucker: a partial interview

The advent of the Internet has created a whole new corporate ballgame. Based on your knowledge of Drucker’s insights and management ideas (Drucker’s brain), how would he approach the management of a virtual company staffed by telecommuters such as yourself? Without management by sight, how would Drucker handle such aspects as human resources, personal relationships, etc? (By this, I mean a company without any central, brick-and-mortar location, with all communication and work performed via the Internet.)

What a great question! Drucker believed a great deal in responsibility and accountability. He once said, “All development is self development,” meaning that it is the responsibility of each and every person to make sure they got whatever training was necessary to excel in their jobs. If Drucker was the head of this virtual organization, he would take a great deal of time in each and every hire to make sure that he was hiring people with the strengths required for each position. He would also put in metrics to make sure that there was a way to measure the performance of each individual.

Lastly, he would hire a manager who had what it took to manage people from a distance (he told me he was “the world’s worst manager,” so he would hire someone else to manage the unit). This would be someone who had the maturity to care more about what was right than who was right, an individual who could make what he called the life and death decisions (know who to hire, fire, and who to promote).

Considering the trying times businesses are facing—tight and tightening margins, shrinking international markets, credit markets slowly coming out of the deep freeze, stock market wealth vanishing without a trace—what Druckerisms specifically apply to this market? What can companies do to survive while staring down the barrel of 1929? And how can they position themselves to take the offensive, not only now but as the recovery progresses?

What a timely question. Drucker felt that management was a “foul weathered job.” He felt that the leader’s most important job was to guide his or her organization through any kind of disaster: “The most important task of an organization’s leader is to anticipate crisis. Perhaps not to avert it, but to anticipate it. To wait until the crisis hits is already abdication,” asserted Drucker.

To get by in these difficult times would involve certain strategic moves. First would be a review of all product lines to make sure they still make sense for the business: Too many organizations have a hard time figuring out what to grow and what to abandon, as Drucker explained in 1982: “…a growth policy needs to be able to distinguish between healthy growth, fat, and cancer ― all three are ‘growth,’ but surely all three are not equally desirable.”

Drucker was telling managers to exercise careful judgment by abandoning the marginal: “Yesterday’s breadwinner should almost always be abandoned on a fairly fast schedule,” explains Drucker. It still may produce net revenue. But it soon becomes a bar to the introduction and success of tomorrow’s breadwinner.”

Which corporate heads strongly influenced Drucker in the development of his theories? And were any of those mentors later torn down to make way for newer theories?

As for practitioners, Drucker’s greatest influence was Alfred Sloan, the head of General Motors for a good part of the first half of the 20th century. Drucker spent most of two years studying GM in the early to mid-1940s, which led to Drucker’s first business book, Concept of the Corporation (1946). Drucker called Alfred Sloan the first “professional manager,” and credits Sloan’s segmentation strategy with unseating Henry Ford and his Model Ts. Sloan was a leader with character, maturity, and commitment, and made General Motors ─ which had been a bunch of smaller businesses strung together ─ one of the world’s greatest companies. Only in recent years has GM really faltered by continuing to make large gas guzzling SUV’s while Toyota ate their lunch with hybrids like the Prius. As a result of the recent financial meltdown, GM is in deep trouble and in stunning fashion, their stock has recently hit a 50-year low!

Laying aside your editorial and publishing background, what specific personal qualifications made you the best person to write this book?

As an author I have always recognized the need to write books that boil down large bodies of work into smaller, bite sizes of information that are easy to understand. This was particularly important with Drucker since he wrote so many books (38), with so many of them being difficult to navigate (he sometimes is repetitive and his writing style is not the simplest to follow). If someone wanted to learn about Drucker’s greatest ideas, where would they start? That’s where I come in. I was able to provide that starting point and pull out the fifteen or so seminal ideas from all of his works so that readers get a real sense of Drucker’s classical concepts, ideas, and strategies. Lastly, because I spent a full day with him and corresponded with him briefly, I was able to humanize him in a way no writer had done before.

You can learn more about Inside Drucker’s Brain and Drucker himself at www.insidedruckersbrain.com or www.jeffreykrames.com. The book is now available for purchase at Amazon.com.

機械翻譯

Translation: English » Chinese (Traditional)
The advent of the Internet has created a whole new corporate ballgame. Based on your knowledge of Drucker’s insights and management ideas (Drucker’s brain), how would he approach the management of a virtual company staffed by telecommuters such as yourself? Without management by sight, how would Drucker handle such aspects as human resources, personal relationships, etc? (By this, I mean a company without any central, brick-and-mortar location, with all communication and work performed via the Internet.) What a great question! Drucker believed a great deal in responsibility and accountability. He once said, “All development is self development,” meaning that it is the responsibility of each and every person to make sure they got whatever training was necessary to excel in their jobs. If Drucker was the head of this virtual organization, he would take a great deal of time in each and every hire to make sure that he was hiring people with the strengths required for each position. He would also put in metrics to make sure that there was a way to measure the performance of each individual. Lastly, he would hire a manager who had what it took to manage people from a distance (he told me he was “the world’s worst manager,” so he would hire someone else to manage the unit). This would be someone who had the maturity to care more about what was right than who was right, an individual who could make what he called the life and death decisions (know who to hire, fire, and who to promote). Considering the trying times businesses are facing—tight and tightening margins, shrinking international markets, credit markets slowly coming out of the deep freeze, stock market wealth vanishing without a trace—what Druckerisms specifically apply to this market? What can companies do to survive while staring down the barrel of 1929? And how can they position themselves to take the offensive, not only now but as the recovery progresses? What a timely question. Drucker felt that management was a “foul weathered job.” He felt that the leader’s most important job was to guide his or her organization through any kind of disaster: “The most important task of an organization’s leader is to anticipate crisis. Perhaps not to avert it, but to anticipate it. To wait until the crisis hits is already abdication,” asserted Drucker. To get by in these difficult times would involve certain strategic moves. First would be a review of all product lines to make sure they still make sense for the business: Too many organizations have a hard time figuring out what to grow and what to abandon, as Drucker explained in 1982: “…a growth policy needs to be able to distinguish between healthy growth, fat, and cancer ― all three are ‘growth,’ but surely all three are not equally desirable.” Drucker was telling managers to exercise careful judgment by abandoning the marginal: “Yesterday’s breadwinner should almost always be abandoned on a fairly fast schedule,” explains Drucker. It still may produce net revenue. But it soon becomes a bar to the introduction and success of tomorrow’s breadwinner.” Which corporate heads strongly influenced Drucker in the development of his theories? And were any of those mentors later torn down to make way for newer theories? As for practitioners, Drucker’s greatest influence was Alfred Sloan, the head of General Motors for a good part of the first half of the 20th century. Drucker spent most of two years studying GM in the early to mid-1940s, which led to Drucker’s first business book, Concept of the Corporation (1946). Drucker called Alfred Sloan the first “professional manager,” and credits Sloan’s segmentation strategy with unseating Henry Ford and his Model Ts. Sloan was a leader with character, maturity, and commitment, and made General Motors ─ which had been a bunch of smaller businesses strung together ─ one of the world’s greatest companies. Only in recent years has GM really faltered by continuing to make large gas guzzling SUV’s while Toyota ate their lunch with hybrids like the Prius. As a result of the recent financial meltdown, GM is in deep trouble and in stunning fashion, their stock has recently hit a 50-year low! Laying aside your editorial and publishing background, what specific personal qualifications made you the best person to write this book? As an author I have always recognized the need to write books that boil down large bodies of work into smaller, bite sizes of information that are easy to understand. This was particularly important with Drucker since he wrote so many books (38), with so many of them being difficult to navigate (he sometimes is repetitive and his writing style is not the simplest to follow). If someone wanted to learn about Drucker’s greatest ideas, where would they start? That’s where I come in. I was able to provide that starting point and pull out the fifteen or so seminal ideas from all of his works so that readers get a real sense of Drucker’s classical concepts, ideas, and strategies. Lastly, because I spent a full day with him and corresponded with him briefly, I was able to humanize him in a way no writer had done before. You can learn more about Inside Drucker’s Brain and Drucker himself at www.insidedruckersbrain.com or www.jeffreykrames.com. The book is now available for purchase at Amazon.com.		因 特網的出現創造了一個全新的企業比賽。根據您的了解德魯克的見解和管理思想（德魯克的大腦） ，如何將他的辦法管理一個虛擬公司配備了遠程辦公，如自己呢？如果忽視管理，德魯克將如何處理等方面的人力資源，人際關係等？ （通過這一點，我的意思是公司沒有任何中央，磚和迫擊砲的位置，所有的溝通和工作通過互聯網。 ） 真是一個偉大的問題！德魯克認為大 量的責任制和問責制。他曾經說： “所有的發展是自我發展” ，也就是說，它的責任是每個人，以確保他們有什麼培訓是必要的，以擅長於自己的工作。如果德魯克是負責這個虛擬的組織，他將大量的時間每僱用，以確保他僱 用的人的長處與需要為每個位置。他還希望建立指標，以確保有一個方法來衡量性能的每一個人。 最後，他將僱用一名經理了誰什麼了管理的人從遠處（他告訴我，他是“世界上最糟糕的經理， ”因此，他將僱用別人來管理的單位） 。這將是誰的人已經成熟到更加關心什麼是正確比誰是正確的，個別誰能夠他所謂的生死存亡的決定（知道是誰僱用，消防，誰促進） 。 考慮到艱難的時刻，企業正面臨緊張和緊縮利潤率，縮小國際市場，信貸市場慢慢走出深凍結，股市財富消失無踪了什麼Druckerisms專門適用於這個市場？怎麼做企業的生存，而盯著每桶下跌了1929年？和他們怎樣的立場採取的進攻，不僅是現在，但作為復甦的進展？ 什麼及時的問題。德魯克認為，管理是一種“犯規風化的工作。 ”他認為，領導者最重要的工作是指導他或她的組織通過任何類型的災難： “最重要的任務，一個組織的領導人是預測危機。也許沒有，以避免它，但預計它。等到危機安打已經退位， “斷言德魯克。 要 通過對這些困難的時候將涉及某些戰略舉措。首先將審查所有的產品線，以確保它們仍然意義的企業：有太多的組織很難搞清楚什麼增長和怎樣放棄，因為德魯克在 1982年解釋說： “ ...增長的政策需要能夠區分健康成長，脂肪與癌症-所有這三個是'增長， '但肯定所有三個不同樣不可取。 “ 德魯克告訴經理小心判決放棄的邊緣： “昨天的養家糊口應該幾乎總是被拋棄了較快的時間表， ”解釋德魯克。它仍然可能產生的淨收入。但它很快成為一個酒吧的引進和成功的明天的養家糊口。 “ 該公司負責人強烈影響德魯克的發展他的理論？和任何人的導師後拆掉，以便進行新的理論？ 至 於從業人員，德魯克的最大影響艾爾弗雷斯隆是，主管通用汽車有一個良好的部分上半年的20世紀。德魯克的大部分時間學習兩年，通用汽車在初期至中期， 20世紀40年代，導致德魯克的第一個商業書籍，概念公司（ 1946年） 。德魯克所謂的阿爾弗雷德斯隆的第一個“職業經理人， ”和信貸斯隆的分割戰略與推翻亨利福特和他的示範溫度。斯隆是一個領導者，性格，成熟，並承諾，並提出通用汽車公司─曾經是一群小企業串成─一個世界上最 大的公司。只有在最近幾年通用汽車真正動搖繼續向大型天然氣耗油SUV的豐田吃他們的午餐一樣與混合動力車普瑞斯。由於最近發生的金融危機，通用汽車公司 是在深麻煩和超炫的時裝，其股價最近創下50年來的最低水平！ 擱置您的編輯和出版背景下，哪些具體的個人資格使你的最佳人選寫這本書？ 作 為一個作家我一直認識到有必要寫的書籍歸結大型機構的工作納入小，咬大小的信息，很容易理解。這是特別重要的與德魯克寫道，因為他如此眾多的書籍（ 38歲） ，與他們中的很多人難以瀏覽（他有時是重複的和他的寫作風格不是簡單的後續） 。如果有人想了解德魯克最偉大的想法，在那裡，他們會開始？這是我進來，我能夠提供的出發點和拔出15或開創性的想法，以便從他的作品使讀者得到真正意義 上的德魯克的經典概念，思路和戰略。最後，因為我花了一整天與他和與他相對短暫，但我能在他的人性化的方式已經沒有作家之前完成。 您可以了解更多有關內部德魯克的腦和德魯克本人在www.insidedruckersbrain.com或www.jeffreykrames.com 。這本書現已在Amazon.com購買。
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