Then something truly extraordinary happened. Brendan had been invited to a special dinner, across the street, at the iSchool of the University of Toronto, honoring the first McLuhan Centenary Visiting Fellows. This is the 100^th anniversary of Marshall McLuhan’s birth, and the school has created a fellowship program for a select group of scholars to spend between three and twelve months in residence in the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the Faculty of Information. I was able to attend as Brendan’s guest; and it was an honor to spend a few hours at the center of the McLuhan world.

McLuhan, who gave us the ideas of the “the medium is the message” and the “global village,” became famous in the 1960s, when he was teaching at the University of Toronto, but he was a friend of Drucker’s long before that. Their relationship is described in a chapter (“The Prophets: Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan”) of Drucker’s 1978 memoir, Adventures of a Bystander. McLuhan co-authored a brief tribute to Drucker, “The Man Who Came to Listen,” in 1970’s Peter Drucker: Contributions to Business Enterprise. They were nearly the same age. Drucker, who died at 95 in 2005, had his centenary marked in 2009, with major events held worldwide for a year. There are also a number of events marking McLuhan’s 100^th, including several this week as part of Toronto’s International Festival of Authors. For a closer look at McLuhan’s time at the university, read Alec Scott’s  “Marshall’s Laws” in UofT Magazine.

I’d like to think that Drucker would have been pleased that I could, even if only unofficially, bring together the Drucker and McLuhan worlds in Toronto on October 13. And I can’t even guess what McLuhan would think!

The broad sweep of the material reflects Drucker’s diversity. The first three chapters are management-focused, but the next four are on Wall Street/Finance, Values/Responsibility, the Public and Social Sectors; and one that I find particularly interesting: Art, Music and Sports. In the latter we learn about his mid-1980s brief engagement as a consultant for baseball’s Cleveland Indians, how his teachings have influenced the Grammy-winning ensemble Southwest Chamber Music, and the relevance to his writing on how to cost products to Radiohead’s 2007 pay-as-you-like experiment for the album In Rainbows. Wartzman is particularly tough on executive compensation (a familiar Drucker theme) and the fate of the automakers. Drucker had intimate knowledge of this sector, stretching back to the 1940s and his book about General Motors, Concept of the Corporation.

As I noted in my post about The Drucker Lectures, Wartzman answered questions for a 2 ½ page Q&A in my book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. That the writing in his new collection is so strong is not surprising, given his background as a longtime journalist for The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, and his work as an author. In particular, he consistently does something that not all journalists/columnists can do: write compelling intros and thought-provoking conclusions. Years from now, people who want an overview of how the business world and society in general unfolded in real time from mid-2007 to early 2011 will find a valuable time capsule in What Would Drucker Do Now?

1. Conferences/conventions vs. retreats. I love conferences, and there are certainly similarities with retreats. But consider the difference in scale between a place like Stillheart (and the locations of the two previous retreats) and a typical large convention center, where you spend a considerable amount of time each day in transit. There are often long waits in line at the lone Starbucks, and limited food choices. At Stillheart, the three communal meals a day were delicious and healthy, and coffee/tea and snacks were always available.

2. A sense of the “other.” Retreats, however structured, get you out of your routine and normal physical settings. Unless you live in or near a redwood forest, you’re not likely to be surrounded by this type of scenery in your daily life.

3. Seeing a different side of friends/colleagues. Each year a highlight has been the Saturday night talent show. I was knocked out by the comedic, singing and musical ability of some of the authors.

4. The element of surprise. Some of the best moments of the retreat came from listening to ideas in different session “threads” that I did not anticipate would be relevant for me. It provided a lesson in the wisdom of suspended judgment.

I am grateful to the BK authors who volunteered their time to organize another wonderful retreat. I’d love to hear other thoughts on the benefits of a retreat, especially from the people who attended this year.

The Drucker Institute (including the extensive online Drucker Archives) has been the go-to point for Drucker material, and now includes a new monthly radio show, “Drucker on the Dial.” The Drucker-Ito School at Claremont Graduate University remains a vital source of Drucker-related knowledge, and Bernard Jaworski was recently appointed as the Peter F. Drucker Chair in Management and the Liberal Arts. There have also been several issues of professional journals devoted to Drucker-related information, including a robust website from Emerald Insight. The current era cries out for the fundamental first principles in which Drucker excelled. I believe Drucker himself would be proud and pleased at the intense interest in him, and might give at least a small smile and nod to the concept of “Drucker as His Own Successor.”