On April 22 I had the honor of being the keynote speaker for the 2023 virtual commencement ceremony of the California Institute of Advanced Management (CIAM), an MBA program begun in 2011 on the “management as a liberal art” principles of Peter Drucker. (In the video link above, my talk begins at 5:26.)
One of the founders of the school is William A. Cohen, whom I have written about previously, and have worked with in my role as managing editor of Leader to Leader, for his Winter 2017 article “Drucker Consulting And IATEP™”. Cohen was Drucker’s first Ph.D student at Claremont Graduate University in the 1970s, and is the author of many excellent books about Drucker’s work.
I was recommended for the keynote by Karen Linkletter, who is affiliated with CIAM as Research Director of the Management as a Liberal Art Research Institute (MLARI). I featured Karen on my blog last month, and also edited her Summer 2022 Leader to Leader article “Leading Through Management as a Liberal Art.” Karen is the coauthor with Drucker’s longtime friend, colleague, and fellow Drucker School of Management professor, the late Joseph A. Maciariello, for the 2011 book Drucker’s Lost Art of Management: Peter Drucker’s Timeless Vision For Building Effective Organizations. She is also writing a forthcoming book about Drucker, which she elaborates on in the blog post.
The opportunity to be a commencement speaker on a Drucker-related topic, for a school partly based on Drucker’s principles, was meaningful for me on many levels. It was also a full circle moment: in May 1986 I first discovered Drucker in a serious way, as a student at The Catholic University of America School of Library and Information Science, where years later I became an adjunct professor.
Drucker’s 839-page book, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices was assigned by professor Duane Webster as the textbook for the library management course I was taking. (It was a summer course, and we did not have to read the entire book!) Duane, who became a friend many years later, retired in 2008 as executive director of the Association of Research Libraries, and taught the course as an adjunct professor. As I related in my keynote, the book spoke to me on a very deep level, and ignited my intensive Drucker study that continues to this day.
The overall concept of Drucker and commencements also holds personal meaning for me. In my book Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way, and for my Psychology Today blog post of a year ago, I wrote about Drucker’s powerful 1964 commencement address at the University of Scranton in my home town of Scranton, Pennsylvania. I was too young to know who Drucker was at the time, but years later, when I discovered the full text of his address, I realized its importance, not just for that day’s graduates (whom he called the ‘first generation of the knowledge revolution,’ and who are now beyond retirement age), but for a much wider audience.
My talk for CIAM, “Living the Drucker Values in Creating Your Future,” centers around five timeless values Drucker lived and exemplified. They apply to not just this year’s graduates, but to all knowledge workers:
Integrity. A bedrock value that includes the whole idea of having personal values in the first place. Identify what those values are; how to cultivate them, and how they relate to our work. Integrity and strength of character engender trust, and without trust our chances for success diminish.
Effectiveness. The theme of one of Drucker’s most important books, The Effective Executive. Within that umbrella term I include workmanship, diligence, being conscientious, and continually building a robust body of work, whatever form that work takes.
Generosity. This value is displayed by helping and collaborating with others; and related areas like giving back by teaching and mentoring; as well as pro bono work and volunteering.
Lifelong learning. A value that can be expressed by either formal learning, or self-study. Drucker engaged in the latter activity for most of his life, picking a subject and studying it intensively for years or months at a time.
Communication. How do people learn about your work, and what you stand for as a person and a professional? Do you use clear and concise language in conveying your message? This pertains to both writing and speaking and puts an emphasis on reaching the outside world beyond your own four walls.
I also reminded the CIAM graduates that Drucker, like them, was once a graduate student figuring out how to make his way in the world and contribute his talents and abilities. And his career as a writer, teacher, and consultant didn’t take off until he was deeper into his thirties and forties. He remained prolific and relevant until he died in 2005, eight days before what would have been his 96th birthday.
I’m under no illusions that the 2023 CIAM graduates will necessarily remember my keynote in the years ahead. When I tracked down one of the University of Scranton’s 1964 graduates many years later, he told me that he was too focused at the time on the whole graduation day experience, and did not recognize the significance of Drucker’s commencement address.
However, if I reached only a few people, and provided them with some food for thought for after-the-diploma life, I will consider my keynote to be a success.