On the Profession of Management.

AuthorMitchell, Donald W.

Since 1950, Professor Peter Drucker has appeared in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) with 32 articles. This new book from Harvard Business School Press is a selection of 12 of those articles and one interview with him that were published in the HBR between 1963 and 1995. The articles are loosely grouped into two subjects,"The Manager's Responsibilities" and "The Executive's World." HBR Editor Nan Stone selected the articles based on whether they were still relevant for present-day readers and the article's ability to stand alone.

Having read most of these articles when they were first published, I began reading them again with some trepidation that rereading would be unrewarding. That fear was quickly dispelled when rereading provided new insights, and repetition of themes from article to article provided deepened understanding.

I found these benefits fell into four categories:

(1) Pearls of wisdom that helped me with a problem I have right now, such as: What kind of people should I be recruiting for technical tasks? (Any knowledge worker who does not know something valuable that no one else in the organization knows is redundant, advises Drucker.)

(2) A structure to explain the changing world (especially the replacement of manual work by knowledge work, and the implications of slower population growth in the developed countries).

(3) Guideposts for managing change in the form of questions that the reader can ask themselves (offered in the article, "Managing for Business Effectiveness").

(4) A vision of the new economic order built around the knowledge worker ("The New Society of Organizations").

Of particular interest to DIRECTORS & BOARDS readers is "What Business Can Learn from Nonprofits" (from 1989), in which Drucker outlines the need for CEOs of companies to make boards effective again by setting tasks for the board, training for board members and work plans to execute those tasks, and measuring board member and board effectiveness in executing the tasks. The Red Cross, Harvard, and a large electric co-op in the Pacific Northwest are described as avatars. Since these words were written, a handful of companies have been heeding his advice and more probably will in the future. In this way, Drucker continues to be a teacher to us all by stimulating effective experiments and pointing out important trends before they are well recognized.

One of the delights of the articles is to be found in studying the examples Drucker uses. Old examples...

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