Living in More Than One World

I have been intently reading an advance copy of My Life in Leadership: The Journey and Lessons Learned Along the Way, the powerful new memoir by Frances Hesselbein, President and CEO of the Leader to Leader Institute. The book details the life of an initially reluctant leader from Johnstown, Pa., who rose through the ranks of the local leadership of the Girl Scouts of the USA to eventually serving as the national organization’s CEO. During those years, Frances worked with Peter Drucker, who did considerable pro bono work for the Girl Scouts after the two met for the first time in 1981. His followers will particularly enjoy the chapter “My Journey with Peter Drucker.” Frances relates how he helped transform the organization, urging it to view itself “life size.” (This is sound advice for all us, personally or organizationally.) After retiring as CEO, she became one of the co-founders of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, now the Leader to Leader Institute. The story of that organization is well-told here. However, it is her leadership of the Girl Scouts, and the personal self-development that it produced in her, going back to her days as a Troop Leader, that remains the moral center of the book. Yet her many years of work with that organization, and with Drucker, are still only part of the book’s message. There is a lot about her family and her work with the U.S. Army and other organizations. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, wrote the compelling foreword, and Frances also discusses nearly 30 years of working with Marshall Goldsmith, long before he became a best-selling author. I am really honored that in 2009, Frances wrote the foreword to my book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. As with Peter, she has been a longtime, worldwide agent of inspiration and transformation. The two also represent something else: contributing mightily to the world long beyond traditional retirement age. My Life in Leadership is a great vehicle for sharing in her learning, lessons and experience.

After my Peter Drucker-related presentations in Claremont earlier this month, I went to New York last week for three speaking engagements: for SLA NYC (held at METRO headquarters), at Baruch College and for the London Business School Club of New York. I was honored to be associated with all these organizations, if only for a short period of time. I met many interesting people at all three events: students, professors, librarians and business people. Baruch College was a particular revelation: a super-vibrant school with highly diverse students. I did not previously know a lot about Bernard Baruch, the alum whom the school was named for. I discovered that he was somewhat Drucker-like, and not just because a school of higher education was named after him. Although they were in different professions, both lived intentional lives of purpose. And both thought about how their work had ramifications beyond themselves, to the world at large. In particular, I was struck by Baruch’s advice – similar to Drucker’s — to take time for self-reflection and contemplation, no matter how busy you are. The London Business School event was on November 11; the fifth anniversary of Drucker’s death. And it was appropriate to go from Claremont, where Drucker lived from 1971 until his death in 2005; to New York, where he lived for many years prior. He taught at New York University, and wrote many of his most important books during those years. The city is also home to the Leader to Leader Institute (formerly the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management), and the Drucker Society of New York City. Last year I did a “fireside chat” with Leader to Leader President and Chief Executive Officer Frances Hesselbein (who wrote the foreword to my book Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life), for the Drucker Society, my only New York event until last week. I left in an energized state of mind, looking forward to more presentations there in 2011.

I’ve just returned from several days in Claremont, Ca., based around the activities for Drucker Centennial Day, which marked the end of a two-year period honoring the life and legacy of Peter Drucker. November 19 is the 101st anniversary of his birth, and he died five years ago this coming November 11. The events were produced by the Drucker Institute at the Claremont Graduate University, home of the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management. The alternately rousing and introspective keynote on Saturday morning was delivered by Tom Peters. I helped coordinate the Drucker Authors Festival segment, and was on the panel “Lessons From Drucker’s Life,” with Jack Beatty and William Cohen. “What Would Drucker Do Now?” had  Jorge Vasconcellos e Sá, Winfried Weber and Gladius Kulothungan; and “Drucker in Historical Context” had Joe Maciariello, Jack Bergstrand and Mike Wood. Although I did not see Kenneth Hopper’s presentation “Turning the World Upside Down,” I was fortunate to have seen the presentation he did with his brother Will Hopper last Thursday, for the Drucker School students, based on their book The Puritan Gift. Other than Cohen, Weber and Maciariello, I had not met the other Drucker-related authors in person before, and getting to know them, and the Hoppers, was a highlight. I also did my own presentation, Designing Your Total Life the Peter Drucker Way, at the Drucker School on Friday morning. It was great to meet new friends who attended, as well as to reconnect with friends from my previous times in Claremont. We had a stimulating impromptu discussion afterwards. The centennial may be over, but the Drucker Institute has a number of promising things in the pipeline, including several more books. The Drucker School is growing and gaining more attention. Both institutions continue to not only honor, but to extend and deepen Peter Drucker’s legacy.

This is the first of an occasional series I’ll be writing on the Peter Drucker book The Drucker Lectures: Essential Lessons on Management, Society and Economy,published earlier this year. Many of the ideas and concepts will be familiar to his longtime readers. But these talks, from 1943 to 2003, two years before his death at 95, have not been published before. Each of the seven parts represents a decade, from the 1940s to the 2000s. In 1989, there are five knowledge lectures. Five years later, he returns for “The Knowledge Worker and the Knowledge Society.” In 2003, there is the four-part “The Future of the Corporation.” The collection was edited and has an introduction by Rick Wartzman, the Executive Director of The Drucker Institute, who writes a column, The Drucker Difference, for Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Rick also 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. Although many of the lectures were given at The Claremont Graduate University, Drucker’s home base for the last 34 years of his life, the settings for some of the others are impressively varied. For instance, “What We Already Know About American Education Tomorrow,” was given as the William T. Beadles Lecture for the American College of Life Underwriters, in 1971. “Management in the Big Organizations” is from a 1967 lecture at a workshop for YMCA managers, in Estes Park, Colorado. “On Health Care” comes from a 1996 speech at the Harvard Medical School. Drucker’s voice rings true, and that’s good news, no matter what subject he tackles, or where the words were spoken.

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the publication of my book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. It’s been a fast moving year as a first-time author, an experience I’m treasuring since you can only do it once. (I welcome eventually being a “second-time” author.) My big recent news is that Diamond, Drucker’s publisher in Japan, has bought Japanese translation rights. I’m looking forward to publication there, as well as to editions scheduled to be published in China, South Korea and Brazil. I’ve also been doing a number of author events throughout this first year. It’s difficult to single out individual ones, as they have all been fun and interesting in various ways. The podcast for my keynote at the National Press Club on April 20 for LexisNexis’ The New Face of Value breakfast for government librarians is now online. There were three events in Pennsylvania: one in Scranton, where I was born and raised; another for the Wharton Club of  Philadelphia and one for the Pittsburgh chapter of SLA. In November I did a presentation for the Drucker Society of Los Angeles, at the Drucker-Ito School, in Claremont, Ca. Later that week, during the Drucker centennial observations, there was a book signing. The week before saw an especially memorable “fireside chat” for the Drucker Society of New York City with Frances Hesselbein, who wrote the wonderful foreword to the book. There have also been a number of articles/reviews. I was particularly pleased with two interviews, one for Idea Connection, and another for CIO.com. Both got me thinking in deeper ways about why I wrote the book, and how Drucker remains so relevant. I expect year number two to be just as busy.

When I heard that two-time Pulitzer Prize winner W.S. Merwin had been named the new Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress, I thought of our shared roots in Scranton, Pa. I was born and raised there and Merwin lived in the city from ages 9-14. His connection was covered by the local media, including the Times-Tribune and neighboring Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre.  Last year I blogged about the city’s transformation, and I returned for the first time in a year and a half two months ago, when I was one of the featured authors for the inaugural event Jewish Authors of Northeastern Pennsylvania. On my final day in town I walked through the reshaped courthouse square area, and saw the new Piazza dell’Arte sculpture paying tribute to Merwin and others from the worlds of the arts and humanities with ties to Lackawanna County.
At the author event I discussed my book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. There is also an important Scranton connection for Drucker. Forty six years earlier, in May 1964, he delivered the commencement address for the University of Scranton, within walking distance of my event, at the Jewish Community Center. At the time, he was 54 and a longstanding bestselling author. I was 12, living a short distance from where he spoke, and unaware of who he was. Part of my talk at the event was about how our lives intersected years later.
As for Merwin, he describes his changed, more positive feelings for Scranton in this 2008 Fresh Air interview. The Times-Tribune story says took part in a poetry series in the area about 20 years ago. What a wonderful touch it would be, if in his new capacity as Poet Laureate, he would make a return visit to Scranton to complete the circle.

As I noted in my previous post, I am writing a short series of progress reports/impressions of the first-time author experience for Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. You can only be a first-time author with a new book once in your life, and I want to make the most of it. Besides my first bookstore event last week at Reiter’s Books in Washington, I have made presentations in a variety of settings. I’ve already spoken three times for the Wharton Club of DC; twice in DC (including once for its Nonprofit Roundtable) and once at the City Club in suburban Virginia. I screened my 21 minute Drucker interview DVD at all these events, and will also be screening it on October 15, when I will do a presentation for the Wharton Club of Philadelphia. Speaking to these audiences is especially meaningful for me, as Drucker had a longstanding history with the Wharton School. I’ve also spoken at two Rotary International meetings in suburban Maryland, and have another scheduled for Washington. I haven’t screened the video at these talks. As with the Wharton events so far, Rotary has been a great audience with insightful questions. Reflecting my own different worlds, I also had a well-attended, exhilarating event in early September for DC/SLA, the local chapter of the Special Libraries Association. This had the highest percentage of friends/professional colleagues/former students in the audience. The video was well received, even by people who had seen it before! Libraries are also a crucial part of my event strategy. I had an enjoyable presentation last week at Arlington County, Va., Public Library. This held special significance as I began working on the book when I was living in Arlington, seven years ago. Next week will be the first of two dates for different locations of DC Public Library. More details are on the About page of my website. I’ll post again after I return from my publisher’s author retreat in California next week.

I haven’t posted for a few weeks, so I would like to add to my blog at least once or twice before I leave later this week for an authors’ retreat in California, sponsored by my publisher, Berrett-Koehler. It’s been a little over two months since my book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life, was published. This post will be the first in a short series of progress reports/impressions of the first-time author experience. I’m focusing mainly on the author events, which have been some of the most crucial activities since publication date. I wrote earlier about the first event (even before the official publication date), the July 11 book signing at the American Library Association annual conference in Chicago. I’ve done a mixture of events since then, all of which have been enjoyable and gave me the opportunity to meet and work with a number of interesting new people. Each event requires considerable detail-work ahead of time. The people I’ve worked with have been very good about making sure things work as smoothly as possible. Depending on the setup, I have done a presentation based on the principles in the book, with a brief account of how I came to write it. At some places, I have screened my 21 minute DVD interview with Drucker, which always gets a positive reaction. The audiences have varied in size, but all have had interesting and thought-provoking questions during the Q&A segment. Most of the events have been and will be held in the Washington, D.C. area, where I live, but some will be held in other cities. On October 1, I did my first bookstore presentation, at Reiter’s Books, in downtown Washington. It was an exhilarating experience, with an audience mixture of friends, former students and people I had not met before. We did not screen the video. In the next post, I’ll go into more detail about where I have done the presentations so far, and where I’ll be going in the near future.

Rich Karlgaard, Forbes publisher and columnist, points out in his August 17 commentary Drucker’s Final Words On Leadership: Manage yourself before you take on responsibility for others, that people who aspire to become leaders must get their own life in order. It’s a brief and to-the-point column; mostly drawing attention to and setting the context for a link to the full text of Peter Drucker’s 1999 Harvard Business Review article Managing Oneself. The latter is an excerpt from Drucker’s important book from the same year, Management Challenges for the 21st Century. I was pleased to see Karlgaard’s column, since the subject matter dovetails perfectly with the self-development theme of my new book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. Also read the insightful interview Peter Drucker On Leadership, conducted by Karlgaard for Forbes.com and published on Nov. 19, 2004, Drucker’s 95th birthday and almost exactly a year before he died. Excerpts from that interview are included in a book I reviewed in 2006 for USA TODAY, The Effective Executive in Action: A Journal for Getting the Right Things Done, a workbook by Drucker and Joseph A. Maciariello, based on Drucker’s classic 1967 book The Effective Executive. (Excerpts from the HBR article are also included.) Reading both the Drucker article/chapter and the Forbes.com interview shows how timeless Drucker’s ideas on self-management are, and why we need to learn about and apply them in today’s world of uncertainty. “Successful careers are not planned,” he writes in the HBR piece. “They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values.” In the interview, he said: “I’ve seen a great many people who are exceedingly good at execution, but exceedingly poor at picking the important things. They are magnificent at getting the unimportant things done.”

Another brief entry today, to note a follow-up to yesterday’s blog about my guest post on the Leader to Leader Institute blog. My new book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life, is now featured as the recommended reading on Leader to Leader’s July online newsletter, Leading Today. The newsletter has lots of interesting material, including Susan Phillips Bari’s President’s Letter about the July 13th inaugural event of the Hesselbein Global Leadership Academy at the University of Pittsburgh. The Academy is named for Leader to Leader Institute Chairman and Founding President Frances Hesselbein, who wrote the foreword to my book. The keynote address was delivered by Jim Collins. The newsletter also has an account of a June conference in Seoul, South Korea (attended by Hesselbein, Bari and Leader to Leader Board Secretary Geneva Johnson) The Key to Responsible High-Performing Society, “the first of a series of events being held around the world to honor Peter Drucker’s life and work on the centennial of his birth.” My book was also the subject of a great July 23rd post by Stephen Abram, on his widely-followed Stephen’s Lighthouse blog.  Stephen is Vice President of Innovation for SirsiDynix. He references Drucker’s keynote address at the SLA annual conference in Los Angeles in 2002, and that “Drucker would have been 100 this year, just like SLA.”