Living in More Than One World

In my previous installment of posts about the new book Drucker: A Life in Pictures, I remarked on the tremendous variety of people who are represented in documents depicted from the Drucker Archives, including Cesar Chavez, Rick Warren and Frances Hesselbein. As the chapter “The Social-Sector Advisor” makes clear, Peter Drucker was a citizen of the highest order. Besides some of the organizations mentioned in my earlier posts, this also illustrates his involvement with CARE International (CARE Foundation International Humanitarian Award; May 24, 1995), the Salvation Army (Evangeline Booth Award, 2001) and Mutual of America (Distinguished Citizens Service Award; April 4, 1991).

I was particularly struck by the photo of the typewritten document “Peter F. Drucker (Partial) List of Community Service Responsibilities 1950-1988.” He separates the list into two categories: (1) Doing, (2) Advisor and Consultant. The first includes (all as Drucker typed it): Trustee-some time Vice-Chairman, Montclair State College, Montclair, NJ, 1960-71;[Drucker lived in Montclair when he taught at New York University]; Board of Directors, American Management Association, 1952-1960; 1972-1976; Commissioner, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1986; Member, Asian Art Council, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1986; Member, Advisory Council, Peace Corps, 1968-1973; President, Society for the History of  Technology.

In category two (again, not repeating organizations from my earlier posts, and as he typed it), the list includes the American Heart Association, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford Graduate Business School, Navajo Indian Tribal Council, International Rescue Committee, Japan House NYC, American Symphony Orchestra League and the Western Association of Hospitals. Those are only some of the organizations on both lists. And all of these responsibilities were on top of his other consulting work, as well as his teaching and writing. Peter Drucker as role model is on full display in this chapter, and in the entire book.

Last week I wrote the first of several installments about the new book Drucker: A Life in Pictures, by Rick Wartzman, Executive Director of the Drucker Institute; with photos by Anne Fishbein (whose work has been displayed in many major museums and galleries), and curated by Drucker Institute archivist Bridget Lawlor. The content reveals a lot about Peter Drucker’s work processes, the thought that underpinned his work, and how varied that work was. In the previous post I mentioned the notes from leaders in business, politics and even baseball. But his involvement and influence extended beyond these worlds. One of the most eye-opening pages contains a short letter to Drucker from the legendary labor leader Cesar Chavez, from February 8, 1982, looking forward to their next meeting ten days later. (Would this be the type of formality taken care of in an email these days?)

Drucker’s social sector work has been well-documented, and is reinforced by the visuals here. He consulted in the 1980s during the tenure of Frances Hesselbein as CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA, and pages 98-99 display photos of Drucker’s Girl Scouts sash and lifetime membership. After retiring as CEO, Hesselbein, Bob Buford and Richard F. Schubert started the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, in 1990. (It’s now called the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute, and with Jossey-Bass, co-publishes the quarterly journal Leader to Leader, where I have been managing editor since 2011.) Buford, the chairman emeritus of the Drucker Institute, was a longtime friend, colleague and consulting partner of Drucker’s. He’s represented by an 8-point document from 2002, “What Peter Drucker Does For Me.” Buford was instrumental in introducing Drucker to people who eventually led the megachurch phenomenon, which I first learned about through Drucker’s writings in the 1990s. One of its major figures, Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren, also had a longstanding relationship with Drucker. On the page opposite Buford’s is a picture of a specially-personalized copy of Warren’s huge-selling book The Purpose Driven Life.

I’ll continue my exploration into Drucker: A Life in Pictures next week. Until then, it’s worth reflecting on not just how Peter Drucker led a life of such significance and influence in so many spheres, but how we can as well.

It’s been three weeks since I’ve been in Claremont, California; where I spent several days at the Drucker School and elsewhere at Claremont Graduate University and The Claremont Colleges. Now the new, Fall 2012 issue of The Flame, CGU’s excellent quarterly magazine, is available in print and online. I’ve been reading this regularly since my first visit to Claremont in 2002, when I began researching my book Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life.
The article  “A Hunger for Change” profiles Badiul Alam Majumdar, Vice President and Country Director, The Hunger Project-Bangladesh. More than 20 years ago, he gave up a tenured teaching position at Washington State University to return to Bangladesh, the country of his birth, to make a different type of difference in the world. He was one of Drucker’s earliest students at Claremont in the early 1970s.
What is the relationship of football and other sports to positive psychology and flow? That is what retired NFL player Damian Vaughn is trying to determine, as related in the article “Football, Flow, and Finding Your Way After Tearing an Achilles Tendon.” Vaughn now consults with athletes and business people on finding flow and peak performance, and is studying at CGU’s School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences (SBOS). He’s also working on two pilot studies at CGU’s Quality of Life Research Center with the founder of flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whom I wrote about for USA TODAY in 2003.
There is also an enlightening Q&A, “The Mormon Moment, In Context” (three pages in the magazine, but extended online) with Patrick Q. Mason, the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and Associate Professor of North American Religion at CGU’s School of Religion (SOR). Besides providing additional context on Mormonism and Mitt Romney, Mason also discusses his own life as a scholar and author, including the important role The Autobiography of Malcolm X has played in that life. “One of the reasons I like Malcolm,” Mason says, “personally and spiritually, is because he was a spiritual pilgrim. His life is a remarkable one of assimilating truth and searching for truth.”

Gordon Pitts of The Globe and Mail in Toronto has a fascinating Q&A today, Why Joseph Rotman hates the ‘do-gooder’ label,  with businessman/philanthropist/volunteer/educator Joseph Rotman, who seems to embody the idea of living in more than one world. The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is named after him. He is highly educated himself and recognizes the value of education not just to individuals, but to all of society. One theme I took away from the interview was that working with and strengthening nonprofit organizations and the arts was in everyone’s interest. They are part of the pillars of making a better life for everyone in a community, or an entire country. Rather than focus so much on shareholder value in business education and running corporations, he says we should use a broader view that takes into account a wider set of stakeholders. “You are part of a total system,” Rotman says, “and, as a corporation and business leader, you have a responsibility to participate in all aspects, which is why I do my community work, why I do my public policy work. I am lucky enough to afford to do it and love doing it.” He sees the arts and the creativity that underpins it as a crucial part of life that should be appreciated on the same level as business, science and technology and other endeavors. The interview is relatively brief, but gives a nice overview of his life, the decisions he’s made about his career and education and how he’s gotten to where he is at age 74. Although he’s well past traditional retirement age, he is doing work and putting his personal fortune to use to benefit as many people as possible. I think it’s significant that the tagline for the Rotman School is “a new way to think.”

I’m one of the few people who have not read a Harry Potter book, and I haven’t seen any of the movies, either. However, I have been fascinated by the phenomenon of the books, and of the personal story and success of J.K. Rowling, since 1998, when I read one of the early reviews of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, written by my friend and former USA TODAY colleague Cathy Hainer, a year before Cathy died of breast cancer. I continued to read a lot about Rowling and the books over the years, and enjoyed the opportunity to do reference questions at USAT about Rowling, especially when the series-ending Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was published in 2007. So it was interesting to read about The Harry Potter Alliance, which had escaped my attention until now, in Deborah Netburn’s July 20 Los Angeles Times feature story Finding lessons for life in Harry Potter books. Netburn interviews the nonprofit alliance’s director, Andrew Slack, about the good work being done in the cause of social justice, inspired by Rowling’s messages. “Slack’s organization uses parallels from the Potter books,” Netburn writes, “to educate and mobilize Potter fans around such issues as workers’ rights and combating genocide.” What is further fascinating to me is that Slack describes himself as a “Harry Potter rabbi.” There is more on the alliance recently in the July 16 CNN report For some fans, lessons of ‘Potter’ carry over into real world and July 14 on Newsweek.com, How Crazy Are Harry Potter Fans? Perhaps one day I’ll start reading a Potter book, but in the meantime, reading about the world and community that has been built around Rowling and her books remains enough for me.

Every year I look forward to the announcement of The MacArthur Foundation’s Fellows Program awards, the so-called “genius grants” that have been given to creative, make-a-difference individuals since 1981. The winners receive $500,000 over five years, with no strings attached on how the money is spent. Reading their profiles, and the media stories about them after they’ve won, is always enlightening. The 2008 fellows include a critical care physician, urban farmer, structural engineer, novelist, anthropologist, stage lighting designer and other professions. The entire list of winners, from 1981-2008, makes fascinating reading.  But the foundation also makes awards to organizations, and on April 27 it announced the worldwide, nonprofit recipients of the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. This is the fourth year of the awards. According to the press release, “All are highly creative and effective organizations that have made a remarkable impact in their fields, driving significant change on a modest budget.” Related to the latter point, the release states, “Each organization will receive up to $650,000, a significant sum considering their annual budgets range from $200,000 to $4.5 million.” There are eight winners; three based in the United States, two in Russia, and one each in Nigeria, India and Trinidad. Each is described in separate pages on the MacArthur site. You can also read the Associated Press article on the awards.