The foremost 20th century thinker in the science of management
Rationale:
Forbes Magazine 'the most enduring management thinker of our time.'. Peter Drucker s comments on and to corporate America often include suggestions and reflections of the importance of Human Capital on corporate performance. My favorites are listed below and further substantiate his influence on the recruiting industry and the recruiting influence on the economy.
Quotations:
'The toughest decision in organizations are people decisions - hiring, promoting, firing, etc. The ability to make good decisions regarding people represents one of the last reliable sources of competitive advantage since very few organizations are very good at it'.
'... engineers and other knowledge workers spend as much as 70% of their time on tasks -- much of it paperwork and support work -- that don t serve the customer.'
'You need to work very hard to get all that does not contribute to performance out of the jobs of knowledge workers and hire people at one-fourth of the knowledge workers salaries to perform those tasks,' Drucker says.
'You need to ask knowledge workers what are their tasks and how they perform service for their customers, and then take everything else they do away from them.'
.' 90% of your organization s time, talent, and energy needs to be focused on adding greater value to your customers. ...All business is on the outside.'
'..people do not systematically work though these common questions -
Do I work well with people or am I a loner? -What are my values?- What am I committed to? -Where do I belong?
- What is my contribution? ...and they often sell themselves short. The most educated people in history, with a world full of options for meaningful work, and yet unsure of just where we belong'
'companies that succeed in attracting and holding knowledge workers past traditional retirement age and make them fully productive will have a tremendous competitive advantage. Attracting and holding older workers may be an untapped necessity'.
About Peter Drucker:
Peter Drucker has been hailed in the United States and abroad as the seminal thinker, writer, and lecturer on the contemporary organization. In 1997, he was featured on the cover of Forbes magazine under the headline, 'Still the Youngest Mind,' and businesslike has called him 'the most enduring management thinker of our time.'
Mr. Drucker has received honorary doctorates from universities around the world. He is Honorary Chairman of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management. He is married and has four children and six grandchildren.
Drucker earned his doctorate in International and Public Law at Frankfurt University
In 1942, he published The Future of Industrial Man (Forbes). In the book, he focused on how the social tasks of community and family were shunned from organizations and business enterprises. The reaction to the book was so profound that in the fall of 1943, General Motors invited Drucker to visit their corporate office and compose an in-depth study of their top management. After viewing GM, Drucker went on to write “Concepts of the Corporation” (Drucker, 1954.pp.73). He coined the term 'intellectual integrity' which means, “Having the ability to see the world as it is, not as you want it to be” (Forbes). In many ways, Drucker can be viewed as a social ecologist.
