"Peter F. Drucker, a Pioneer in Social and Management Theory Is Dead at 95…" read the NY times today.

Perhaps you are not familiar with Peter Drucker. Yet even if you haven’t it is his social and management theories that are driving innovation in these areas to today.

Though often called a political economist and author, Drucker himself finally settled on "social ecologist". I have decided to contain this post to some quotes of his, most that speak to me, with the hope that they will spark and create possibilities for thinking and innovation in new directions for leadership, organisational and economic forms:

- "Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives’ decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake. "

- "Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.

- "Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things."

- ""Leadership is about creating an alignment of strengths and making people’s weaknesses irrelevant." (love this too)

- "5 Drucker questions - What is our mission? - Who is our customer? - What does the customer value? - What are our results? -What is our plan?’

- "Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action."

- "Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes. "

- "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things"

- "My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions. " (I am going to use this one!!)

- "Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work. " (And this one!)

- "The best way to predict the future is to create it."

- "The computer is a moron." (Marge, this is for you…though in time it may not be true, if my artificial intelligence friends and their bretheren have anything to do with it!) 

There are so many more things but these should highlight why I think in losing Peter Drucker, we lost a lot of light. I wish his family and friends only good things…

I will end the same way that the NY articles does, with the answer to a question posed to Drucker early last year "was there anything in his long career that he wished he had done but had not been able to do." "

Yes, quite a few things," he said. "There are many books I could have written that are better than the ones I actually wrote. My best book would have been "Managing Ignorance," and I’m very sorry I didn’t write it."

Epilogue: I raise a challenge on this last comment. Ask yourself - is there ignorance I hold? Start there, then go outward…

For those interested in his background, his 30 books, and his specific contributions to new social, management and leadership theories follow these links and see where they take you:

http://www.peter-drucker.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 12th, 2005 at 11:33 pm and is filed under questions, quotes, stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.