Managing Leadership^®

Most managers know who Peter Drucker is. He was particularly quotable, so many also can identify some of the pointers to his ideas: management by objectives, knowledge worker, and the like.

Most people, though – including a good number who pretend to – really know little more than that. There is a presumption that if you want to learn about management you have to, as in many other things, read the latest books. The older stuff is viewed as outdated, overcome by new “discoveries.”

But the principles of management are a good bit sturdier than that. And few people have turned a finer mind to the subject and a keener ability to explain it than has Drucker.

Unfortunately, most modern writers draw from him without attribution – or at least discuss things he wrote about first without acknowledging that. Moreover, since he turned his back on academia in what it views as important ways, it has turned its back on him, as well.

As a result, few managers who have entered the field in recent decades have actually had the requirement or the meaningful opportunity to become acquainted with or to read Drucker directly. The prospect of doing so can seem daunting, since some of his key books are large, and others are specific. It’s hard to know where to start, and there are few good places to go where one can get a decent overview of his thinking that offers both helpful breadth and depth.

Jeffrey Krames’s new book, “Inside Drucker’s Brain,” is one of those, and perhaps the best. Krames, who has edited and written many books on management, has produced in this one an engagingly readable explanation of the foundation of Drucker’s thinking and the history that led to his remarkable career in – even invention of – the field of management study.

Of particular value is the excellent breakdown and summary of Drucker’s key thinking and principle ideas about management and business. Krames wrote this book after spending an intense day listening to Drucker’s own explanation of those ideas, their genesis and meaning, and his own role in the development of management as a legitimate and important field of separate study and professional practice. Krames supplemented this with his own extensive reading, over the years, of Drucker’s many books, including some re-reading after the interview.

The result is a really excellent primer of Drucker’s work. Each idea receives its own chapter, with a brief explanation, as appropriate, of its place in the development of the field of management and of Drucker’s thinking, a very effective summary of its content amply supplemented with quotations from Drucker’s most memorable writing on that topic, and amplified with enlightening current examples of its enduring relevance.

This book serves the subject well. It is a quick and effective read, well organized to suit the snippets of time available to a manager at any point in his or her career, yet leaving you after each visit with actionable new ideas – and eager to get back to it for more.

Additionally, it acts as a guide to deeper exploration of the subject. Many of you will be encouraged to move into direct reading of Drucker’s work armed with a better knowledge both of what you are looking for and where you will find it. There is even a list of what Drucker himself assessed as his 6 most important books.

It should be noted that Krames has written extensively on other major figures in management, and this fact sometimes appears in a peculiarly distracting way in the book. There is also a tendency, that some other recent authors have adopted as well, to present Drucker’s thinking on individual leadership as more in accord with much of the prescriptions of the modern leadership movement than I think there is good cause to make.

But most will either not notice or not be the bothered in the least by such minor blemishes. And in fact, even those who do notice won’t be at all discouraged by it. There is too much of value in this book.

Jeffrey Krames has produced a marvelous insight into the “Inside of Drucker’s Brain.” I strongly recommend the book – whatever your degree of acquaintance with Drucker, this book will deepen it, and both encourage and make more effective your further reading of his work.

Please do get a copy. You still have plenty of shopping days left to get it as a gift – for yourself and your colleagues and staff – enjoy!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of training and development (which Drucker said is always self-development), did you know that this week is Employee Training Week? Please see this post by Molly DiBianca, of The Delaware Employment Law Blog, for a discussion of the connection between training and engagement at work, as well of some terrific resources for further reading. (If only she had known to include “Inside Drucker’s Brain!”)

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