The Daily Drucker: January 29 – Performance: The Test of Management

Achievement rather than knowledge remains both the proof and aim of management.

The ultimate test of management is performance.  Management, in other words, is a practice, rather than a science or profession, although containing elements of both.  No greater damage could be done to our economy or to our society than to attempt to professionalize management by licensing managers, for instance, or by limiting access to management positions to people with a special academic degree.  On the contrary, the test of good management is whether it enables the successful performer to do her work.  And any serious attempt to make management “scientific” or a “profession” is bound to lead to the attempt to eliminate those “disturbing nuisances,” the unpredictability of business life – its risks, its ups and downs, its “wasteful competition,” the “irrational choices” of the consumer – and in the process, the economy’s freedom and its ability to grow.

ACTION POINT: Which of your management practices have yielded good results?  Which practices should you abandon now?

                                                                                                                              

 Quoted from The DailyDrucker, January 29, page 31