In November 2018, the world’s leading management conference—the Global Peter Drucker Forum—will debate a profound question: “management—the human dimension.” A cast of eminent thinkers and executives will consider nothing less than the possibility of “a business reformation”— something analogous to Martin Luther’s call of 1517 for the Roman Catholic Church to abandon the sale of indulgences. The Drucker Forum invites us “to rethink how organizations, businesses, are actually run, why they are run, and what their purpose and role are in society.” The Three Responsibilities of Management In responding to this call, a good starting point is Peter Drucker’s 1954 classic book, Management, which formulated three responsibilities of management: assuring the performance of the institution […]

The world’s leading management conference—the Global Peter Drucker Forum—will gather in Vienna next month (November 16-17, 2017) for its annual get-together. Once again, a star-studded cast of eminent speakers will discuss a set of big issues, including: what will it take to achieve global broad-based prosperity in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world? Although an array of bold new ideas will, as in previous years, be canvassed, perhaps the most important suggestion for the Forum to consider is something simpler: why not get on with the implementation of the ideas already laid out by Peter Drucker many years ago? Unleashing Innovation-Driven Growth Globally In Part 1 of this article, I looked at the issue […]

            “The future is already here. It’s just very unevenly distributed.” —William Gibson The world’s leading management conference—the Global Peter Drucker Forum—will gather in Vienna next month (November 16-17, 2017) for its annual get-together. Once again, a star-studded cast of eminent speakers will discuss a set of big issues, including: what will it take to achieve global broad-based prosperity in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world? Although an array of bold new ideas will, as in previous years, be canvassed, perhaps the most important suggestion for the Forum to consider is something simpler: why not get on with the implementation of the ideas already laid out by Peter Drucker […]

Can large organizations act entrepreneurially and innovate systematically at scale? In 2011, Ericsson (a 140-year old Swedish firm with around 100,000 employees) embraced Agile for its business in managing networks for the world’s telecommunications companies. Before 2011, Ericsson would build its systems on a five-year cycle, with a unit housing several thousand employees. When the system was finally built, it would be shipped to the telecoms and there would be an extended period of adjustment as the system was adapted to fit their needs. Now with Agile management, Ericsson has over 100 small teams working with its customers’ needs in three-week cycles. The result is faster development that is more relevant to the specific needs […]

In his book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1985), Peter Drucker argued that the US was experiencing “a profound shift from a ‘managerial’ to an ‘entrepreneurial’ economy.” This had been made possible by “new applications of management…and above all, to systematic innovation.”[1]   Entrepreneurial management, Drucker wrote, requires very different managerial practices including (1) focusing managerial vision on opportunity; (2) generating an entrepreneurial spirit throughout its entire management group and (3) systematic listening to and interactions with the staff.[2]   “Today’s businesses, especially the large ones,” Drucker wrote in 1985, “simply will not survive in this period of rapid change and innovation unless they acquire entrepreneurial competence….Existing businesses will need to change, and change greatly in any […]

“The world,” writes Alan Murray in Fortune, “is in the midst of a new industrial revolution.” The “frictionless corporation” of the 21st Century is “driven by technology that is connecting everyone and everything, everywhere and all the time.”   What then are the management practices of “the frictionless corporation” that enable “labor, information, and money move easily, cheaply, and almost instantly”?   Over the last year, a group of companies interested in finding out joined together to form a Learning Consortium for the Creative Economy, sponsored by Scrum Alliance, a membership association of more than 400,000 members with the mission of transforming the world of work.   Following nine site visits conducted during the summer […]

The humanist strand of management thinking that celebrates teams and collaboration through respect for customers and workers as human beings has a long and distinguished history. It includes Mary Parker Follett (1920s), Elton Mayo and Chester Barnard (1930s), Abraham Maslow (1940s), Douglas McGregor (1960s), Peter Drucker (1970s), Peters and Waterman (1980s), Katzenbach and Smith (1990s), and Gary Hamel (2000s).   Yet despite almost a century of fine management writing and many successful initiatives, the ugly truth is that the lasting impact on general management practice has been limited. Even humanist change initiatives that were dramatically successful by objectively measured standards have often been discarded by the firms that introduced them. Sooner or later, firms revert […]