I\u2019ve been stealing from Peter Drucker for nearly 40 years. It\u2019s been a largely subconscious endeavor because Drucker\u2019s early thinking and articulations had become so embedded in my operating framework that they became detached from the original source. It wasn\u2019t until recently when I came across a veritable trove of tweetable Druckerisms neatly assembled by J.D. Meier<\/a> \u2013\u2013 that I realized how much I had been cribbing, cadging, and quoting from the man Business Week<\/em> said \u201cinvented management.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I began my career in the late 1960s at Mary Quant, the iconic London fashion house largely responsible for gifting the world with the miniskirt and hot pants. It was there that I first encountered Drucker\u2019s book, The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done <\/em>(1967). Working in the fashion industry during the height of London\u2019s Mod scene was a good way to quickly learn the difference between doing an OK job and brilliant execution. With product life cycles about six months long, our mantra was simple: \u201cDream it, do it, kill it.\u201d <\/em>This was a thrilling, heady time. But it wasn\u2019t until I devoured The Effective Executive<\/em> that I recognized I was living through a crucible of Drucker theory. Learning as I went, I was daily witness to the \u201csocial technology\u201d of management as a way of understanding business and the world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI live my life in widening circles, that reach out across the world,\u201d<\/em> begins a memorable poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. Widening my own career circles, following my run in London fashion I became a senior marketing executive for Gillette and Procter & Gamble in Europe and the Middle East, then CEO of Pepsi-Cola in the Middle East and Canada and, eventually, in 1997, was named worldwide CEO of legendary advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. The constant through all this\u2014as I moved from fashion to packaged goods to food & beverage to advertising\u2014was a steady diet of Drucker.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What did I learn from the man former General Electric Chairman Jack Welch called \u201cthe greatest management thinker of the last century\u201d? The necessity of institutional and personal purpose. The idea of business management as a liberal art. Decentralization, time management, and the importance of treating workers as assets. The primacy of language and words and storytelling.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rilke\u2019s poem reminds us that quests don\u2019t run in straight lines: widening circles must also send you back. I have recently returned to Drucker, re-immersed myself in his theory, and re-experienced anew my revelation at his ability to codify the business of management into theory and practice. As great a necessity as human emotion, Drucker\u2019s teachings resonate today as vibrantly as when I first encountered them as a young man in the 1960s. Sadly, though we all owe him plenty, Drucker remains largely unfamiliar to a new generation of managers and business leaders.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Moore\u2019s Law<\/a> famously tells us that computer processing power approximately doubles every year. While it\u2019s urban legend that people utilize just \u201cten percent of the brain<\/a>,\u201d the story of human development has still been comparatively slow. What does this disconnect between our technology and ourselves mean to managers and what might Drucker have to teach us still? More than a few noteworthy technologists, scientists, and innovators have raised alarms about technology outpacing its inventors. SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk called artificial intelligence \u201cour biggest existential threat<\/a>,\u201d and recently made a $10 million donation<\/a> to the Future of Life Institute<\/a> to help find ways to keep AI friendly. \u201cThe future is scary and very bad for people,\u201d Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak recently said. \u201cIf we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they\u2019ll think faster than us and they\u2019ll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Drucker\u2014prescient enough to have coined the term \u201cknowledge worker\u201d way back in the 1950s\u2014was, I think, primarily a humanist and possessed a deeper understanding. \u201cThe major questions regarding technology are not technical but human<\/em> questions,\u201d Drucker said in the 1960s. Even before the arrival of the digital age, Drucker was there to remind us that we claim our humanity by being human. By championing insight over inputs. Story over data.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In Brand Loyalty Reloaded<\/a>, <\/em>a \u201cred paper\u201d published in September that explores how to navigate the emotional territory of brands, I suggest that \u201cBig Data needs Big Love.\u201d A study by Gartner reported that by 2017, CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs. Well, good luck to all those new \u201cChief Metric Officers,\u201d because data will never replace an understanding of the fundamentals of human nature. True, we are living in an era of data mining, modeling, measuring, and monitoring that would have made George Orwell blush. But while many have presented Big Data as a dream scenario for brands to more precisely identify and target their audiences\u2014a perfect marketing moment\u2014numbers and technology alone won\u2019t do the trick. That\u2019s because algorithms will never be able to read and respond to people the way people do. It\u2019s because Big Data can read the lines, but not between them. Big Data can turn up at the perfect moment but not ignite it. Big Data cannot dream up stories, inspire us, and teach us about love.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I owe Peter Drucker an enormous debt. His theories have helped explain to me how the world works and guided me throughout my career. Drucker\u2019s teachings are as valid today\u2014whether you\u2019re reading this on a phone, pad, or watch\u2014as they were when he punched them out on a manual typewriter generations ago. The digital age has brought us astonishing tools, but the fundamentals of being human\u2014to love, to create, to be valued, to know and to be known\u2014are intrinsic and timeless. Technology can widen the circle. But the circle is us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kevin Roberts<\/a> is Executive Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi<\/a> \u2013 one of the world\u2019s leading creative organizations with over 6,500 people and 130 offices in 70 countries \u2013 and part of Publicis Groupe<\/a>, the world\u2019s third largest communications group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve been stealing from Peter Drucker for nearly 40 years. 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