Sand and stone
When presented with a problem a common response is to rush to action. Drill right in to a solution and then move on. But that is often the wrong thing to do. It certainly is when considering something...
View ArticleFirst things first
When, in attempting to address a question or solve a problem, rather than solutions you find yourself surfacing additional questions and problems, you are probably on the right track. More than that,...
View ArticleMind and muscle
We’ve been looking, over the past few days, at some of Peter Drucker‘s ideas about organizational design. The main lesson of his thinking is in his drive to first principles, and to his relentless...
View ArticleFatal and futile fads
Two weeks ago, we discussed the question of management fads, their causes and effects (academics, consultants, management). Author and consultant Ravi Tangri pointed out in a comment that some of the...
View ArticleBook Review: Inside Drucker’s Brain
Most managers know who Peter Drucker is. He was particularly quotable, so many also can identify some of the pointers to his ideas: management by objectives, knowledge worker, and the like. Most...
View ArticleCreating businesses
Peter Drucker used to argue that the purpose of a business is to create a customer. He encouraged executives not to try to explain their businesses to their customers, but to let their customers – and...
View ArticleLingering leadership
We noted yesterday that society has changed dramatically over the past few hundred years, but individual leadership continues to be conceived and cultivated virtually as it has for millennia. What,...
View ArticleForesight and serendipity
Peter Drucker used to say that the thing to look out for isn’t the trend, but a change in the trend. He also emphasized that true innovation doesn’t aim to change the future, but to better address the...
View ArticleAmateur Hour
In the course of this current series, we have seen that the general concept of individual leadership in organizations suffers from a debilitatingly long list of failures. It lacks system, it defies...
View ArticleThe meaning of management
Surprisingly, it isn’t all that clear what the professional activity is that managers do. Indeed, as he delved in to the effort to define “management” in his must-have “Management: tasks,...
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