Living in More Than One World

Recently I was interviewed, via email and in English, by the Brazilian publication Administradores, for a major feature (in Portuguese only) on Peter Drucker. The Portuguese translation of my book, O Legado De Peter Drucker, was published last year in Brazil by Campus Elsevier. The premise of the article was who, if anyone, could be considered to be a successor to Peter Drucker. An idea that came to mind as I thought of my responses was “Drucker as His Own Successor.” I don’t mean that in a flippant way. In the five and a half years since his death at age 95, there has been an explosion of Drucker-related research and writing. We understand so much more about his work, given the many books and articles that have been published since then. We have greater access to his work, with the increased ability to buy even his more obscure book titles online. And of course many of his books are available in digital format, which was, for the most part, not the case during his lifetime. The same goes for online videos. This increased access to his ideas, and ideas inspired by or about him, means that we have more and better ways to apply those ideas in our own life and work.

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.”

The publication of the new book by Joseph A. Maciariello and Karen E. Linkletter, Drucker’s Lost Art of Management: Peter Drucker’s Timeless Vision For Building Effective Organizations marks a major event in Drucker studies. Maciariello was a longtime professor/colleague and friend of Peter Drucker’s at the Drucker-Ito School. He also coauthored the last three Drucker books: Management: Revised Edition, The Effective Executive in Action and The Daily Drucker. Linkletter was the first archivist at the Drucker Institute (where Maciariello is Director of Research and Academic Director), and is a historian who teaches American Studies at California State University at Fullerton. Although I haven’t finished reading the 456 page book, what I have read is fascinating. The authors explore in detail the roots of Drucker’s thinking that led to his idea of “management as a liberal art,” and his development as a dominant force in modern management.

Considerable added value is provided by their explanations of the people and ideas that influenced Drucker, and then synthesizing many of these ideas to demonstrate their importance in Drucker’s work as a writer, teacher and consultant. So we get, for instance, mini-biographies of Drucker influences such as the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Thorstein Veblen (“The Theory of the Leisure Class”) and many others. There is even a 41 page section on Abraham Lincoln as a case study in leadership in relation to Drucker’s principles.

What I find particularly fascinating about the book is the wealth of material about Drucker in regard to faith, spirituality and religion, and how these areas influenced his work and thinking. Drucker’s books are filled with references to these topics, though as the authors point out, he generally did not make his own religious views a prominent part of his writing or teaching. See in particular their examination of Drucker’s highly personal 1949 essay “The Unfashionable Kierkegaard,” and their background material on Kierkegaard. Although I have not met Linkletter, I have known Maciariello since 2002, when he was the first person I interviewed for my book. For more on his work and relationship with Drucker, see this 2009 interview with Alistair Craven.

Joshua Green’s article in The Atlantic, Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead, got considerable attention when it was published earlier this year. Last weekend’s Fairport Cropredy Convention, the long-running outdoor festival the British band produces each August, got me thinking that perhaps we should also consider the Management Secrets of Fairport Convention. Not that the latter has had anywhere near the business success of the Grateful Dead, but Fairport has many things in its favor. The band, which has been together in one form or another for more than 40 years, is as much a collection of concepts and ideas as a musical entity. It stands for a number of admirable things: quality, roots, continuity, inclusiveness, durability, relevancy and timelessness. One page on their site gives all the details for anyone wanting to do business with them. Somehow I doubt that they make a lot of money, though I imagine that financial wealth is relatively low on their list of aspirations. But they have admirably produced the festival, which draws 20,000 people yearly; and in recent years, released albums on their own label. (All of the early albums on major labels still sound great. They were definitely, to borrow a phrase from Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, Built to Last.) Fairport Convention’s inclusiveness and sense of family is also demonstrated by a page on their site with links to sites of former members, with the best known being Richard Thompson. Although he often appears at Cropredy, as do other former members, this year he was on tour in the States. Another former member, Sandy Denny, died in 1978. Her stature and importance as an artist has grown considerably since her death. She will be the subject of a 19-CD box set next month, according to this recent feature in The Guardian. Any person or organization attempting to build a successful brand and develop a community can take notes on how Fairport connects with their community in such a sincere, good-humored, genuine way.