The Daily Drucker: January 10 - Management as the Alternative to Tyranny

The alternative to autonomous institutions that function and perform is not freedom.  It is totalitarian tyranny.

If the institutions of our pluralist society of institutions do not perform in a responsible autonomy, we will not have individualism and a society in which there is a chance for people to fulfill themselves.  We will, instead, impose on ourselves complete regimentation in which no one will be allowed autonomy.  We will have a Stalinism rather than participatory democracy, let alone the joyful spontaneity of doing one's own thing.  Tyranny is the only alternative to strong, performing autonomous institutions.

Tyranny substitutes one absolute boss for the pluralism of competing institutions.  It substitutes terror for responsibility.  It does indeed do away with the institutions, but only by submerging all of them in the one all-embracing bureaucracy of the apparat.  It does produce goods and services, though only fitfully, wastefully, at a low level, and at an enormous costs in suffering, humiliation, and frustration.  To make our institutions perform responsibly, autonomously, and on a high level of achievement is thus the only safeguard of freedom and dignity in the pluralist society of institutions.  Performing, responsible management is the alternative to tyranny and our only protection against it.

ACTION POINT: What steps can you take now to improve the performance of the institution for which you are responsible?

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, January 10 , Page 12