The Daily Drucker: January 13 – Management and the Liberal Arts

Management is a liberal art.

Management is what tradition used to call a liberal art – “liberal” because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge, self-knowledge, wisdom, and leadership; “art” because it deals with practice and application.  Managers draw upon all of the knowledges and insights of the humanities and social sciences – on psychology and philosophy, on economics and history, on the physical sciences and ethics.  But they have to focus this knowledge on the effectiveness and results – on healing a sick patient, teaching a student, building a bridge, designing and selling a “user-friendly” software program.

ACTION POINT: What is your plan to develop yourself in the humanities and the social sciences? Develop such a plan today.

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, January 13 , Page 15  

The Daily Drucker: January 12 – Practice Comes First

Decision makers need to factor into their present decisions “the future that has already happened.”

Decision makers- in government, in the universities, in business, in the labour unions, in churches – need to factor into their present decisions the future that has already happened. For this they need to know what events have already occurred that do not fit into their present-day assumptions, and thereby create new realities.

    Intellectuals and scholars tend to believe that ideas come first, which then lead to new political, social, economic, psychological realities.  This does happen, but it is the exception.  As a rule, theory does not precede practice.  Its role is to structure and codify already proven practice.  Its role is to convert the isolated and “atypical” from exception to “rule” and “system,” and therefore into something that can be learned and taught and above all, into something that can be generally applied.

ACTION POINT: Are the premises that you base your decisions on obsolete?  Do you need a new intellectual framework to win in the market, as it exists today?

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, January 12 , Page 14 

The Daily Drucker: January 11 – Management and Theology

Management always deals with the nature of Man, and with Good and Evil.

Management always lives, works and practices in and for an institution, which is a human community held together by a bond: the work bond.  And precisely because the object of management is a human community held together by the work bond for a common purpose, management always deals with the nature of man and (as all of us with any practical experience have learned) with Good and Evil, as well.  I have learned theology as a practicing management consultant than when I taught religion.

ACTION POINT: Do you have any colleagues who are truly evil?  Is there anything you can do about it?

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, January 11 , Page 13 

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

The Daily Drucker: January 9 - The New Corporation's Persona

In the Next Society's corporation, top management will be the company,  Everything else can be outsourced.

Increasingly, in the Next Society's corporation, top management will, in fact, be the company. This top management's responsibility will cover the entire organization's direction, planning, strategy, values and principles; its structure and relationships between the various members; its alliances, partnerships, and joint ventures; its research, design and innovation.

Establishing a new corporate persona calls for change in the corporation's values.  And that may well be the most important task for top management.  In the half century after the Second World War, the business corporation has brilliantly proven itself as an economic organization, as a creator of wealth and jobs.  In the Next Society, the biggest challenge for the large company and especially for the multinational may be its social legitimacy - its values, its mission, its vision. Everything else can be outsourced.

ACTION POINT: Focus on your organization's values, mission and vision, and consider outsourcing everything else.

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, 9 January, page 11

The Daily Drucker: January 8 - Autonomy in Knowledge Work

Knowledge work requires both autonomy and accountability.

Demanding of knowledge workers that they define their own task and its results is necessary because knowledge workers must be autonomous.  As knowledge varies among different people, even in the same field, each knowledge worker carries his or her own unique set of knowledge.  With this specialized, unique knowledge, each worker should know more about his or her specific area than anyone else in the organization.  Indeed, knowledge workers must know more about their areas than anyone else; they get paid to be knowledgeable in their fields.  What this means is that once each knowledge worker has defined his or her own task and once the work has been appropriately restructured, each worker should be expected to work out his or her own course and to take responsibility for it.
  Knowledge workers should be asked to think their own work plans and then submit them.  What am I going to focus on?  What results can be expected for which I should be held accountable? By what deadline? Knowledge work requires both autonomy and accountability.

ACTION POINT: Write a work plan that includes your focus, desired results, and deadline.  Submit it to your boss.

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, January 8 , Page 10

The Daily Drucker; January 7 - Knowledge Workers: Asset Not Cost

Management's duty is to preserve the assets of the institution in its care.

Knowledge workers own the means of production.  It is the knowledge between their ears. And it is a totally portable and enormous capital asset.  Because knowledge workers own their means of production, they are mobile. Manual workers need the job much more that the job needs them.  It may still not be true for all knowledge workers that the organization needs them more than they need the organization. But for most of them it is a symbiotic relationship in which the two need each other in equal measure.

Management's duty is to preserve the assets of the institution in its care.  What does this mean when the knowledge of the individual knowledge worker becomes an asset and, in more and more cases, the main asset of the institution?  What does this mean for personnel policy?  What is needed to attract and to hold the highest-producing knowledge workers?  What is needed to increase their productivity and to convert their increased productivity into performance capacity for the organization?

ACTION POINT: Attract and hold the highest-producing knowledge workers by treating them and their knowledge as the organization's most valuable assets.

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, Page 9