Comments

Thanks for putting this set of slides together. Mary Oliver is also one of my favorites poets and you've collected some of her quotes that I cherish.

Stanley Kunitz, the former Poet Laureate for the United States, who recently passed away in his late 90s, is another favorite. If you haven't read "Interviews and Encounters with Stanley Kunitz," you might find several pieces of gold. My copy is dog-eared, worn and loved.

Posted by Cheryl McLaughlin at September 23, 2006 3:12 AM

Just finished reading the attached PowerPoint and WOW!

Always WOW! It surprises me that I never get tired of reading your materials! Thanks!

Posted by Dennis D. Balajadia at September 24, 2006 10:11 AM

Tom

This powerpoint is brilliant. One of your best. But watch it. If you're not careful you will lose the "business/management guru" tag and will start being called a "Humanistic Philosopher". Maybe that's the answer to not knowing what you want to do when you grow up!

I really believe (not that I know much at all) that the human race's biggest challenge (bigger than even global warming and AIDS) is to find a way to release the latent potential of so many people who are living beneath their capability(probably all of us!)

Posted by tomjam at September 24, 2006 2:18 PM

What a shame Tom, to boil Druckers' seminal work down to one lousy quote with no context. Personally, I've levered you and Drucker as eesential book-ends. Drucker for the "What" - with the emphasis on effectiveness(doing the right things) and efficiency(doing things right). Peters for the "How" and "Why" - for the glory of God with all my heart, soul, strength and mind.

Posted by jimi at September 25, 2006 7:01 AM

Jimi,

Indeed, I too felt that PD's quote was taken hopelessly out of context. Something which I addressed in the comments on the original post. In any case, one only has to read his biography "Adventures of a bystander" to see that Drucker was an extraordinarily decent man who cared deeply for people. His respect for the individual in any stripe clearly shapes his anti-nazi and anti-communist writing for example.

Posted by frederick kambo at September 25, 2006 7:38 AM

That was a cheap shot, Tom, not to mention the intellectual dishonesty of ripping one comment out of a lifetime of work and presenting it as a summary. Drucker is the person who first told us to build on our strengths, way before Marcus Buckingham et al came to the party. His work, more than any other management author I've read is about lifting people up not boxing them up.

Posted by Wally Bock at September 25, 2006 3:59 PM

I'm not a Drucker fan, but the quote at the beginning of the PowerPoint is, unfortunately, all too true, not only of professional schools but of the U.S. educational system in general. The object is not to "educate" (i.e., if you get back to the Latin roots of the word, to bring out the best in each person), but to force everyone to abandon his/her individuality and conform to the mold of the well-behaved, obedient, "make no waves" workplace drone. The creative entrepreneurs who revolutionalized business in the past century were almost all "problem" students: they were expelled from school, dropped out, barely graduated, etc.

I recently went to my 40th college reunion, and an informal survey of my classmates bore this out: The former straight-A students were almost all in "safe but boring" jobs, while the most successful among us (financially and personally) had never distinguished themselves academically in college.

Posted by Paula at September 25, 2006 5:13 PM

I guess third time's the charm. I keep bumping into this quote and finally need to chime in just for my own sanity.

I remember reading the piece (or pieces) which includes Drucker's concept of "competent mediocrities" as the inevitable output of professional schools. He referred in particular to medical schools and in this he is VERY right. The over riding (though mostly unspoken) purpose of a medical school is to make sure it does not turn out incompetant killers. That is not to say that medical schools do not turn out brilliant physicians, but that's the top 20% or 5% or 1%. The rest of those graduating classes, and as a funeral director I have had PLENTY of conversations with PLENTY of disgruntled families over nominal or incomplete care, comprise folks who have enough knowlede to not be dangerous most of the time. That's the meaning Drucker intended.

I presume the same can be said of many many B-school grads. They know what has worked in the past. They know what hasn't worked in the past. In a relatively stable world they won't get you into too much trouble and if they need to shake things up a little bit, they know how to juggle M&A paperwork. And isn't that how most companies function on Wall Street (not all but most)???

Of course, B-school grads have a MUCH more dynamic environment in which to function. Making it all the more difficult to turn out reliable graduating classes.

In medicine the sort of competence floor Drucker talks about, probably works because the human body and its mechanisms do not change from generation to generation. The detail of understanding may change. The quality and range of treatments may increase but in large measure the learning is cumulative year over year and subject to ever more stringent scientific review.

On the business side however, companies and the people who run them exist in a very darwinian environment which is running hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of times FASTER than the genetic landscape with which medicine must cope (ie. Since Hippocrates developed his oath, humanity has NOT branched out into any different species. The fundamental object of study, the human body, has changed very little in those thousands of years. BUT how many "species" of social, financial, political systems, etc., etc. have come and gone in that time? Thousands? Millions? hard to say).

Most human organizations will struggle to cope with such rapid change. Dynamistic responsiveness is very tough to teach and practically impossible to codify in a textbook (by the time you write things up and get them published they are already out of date).

Business probably needs a totally different education model. But then again, the schools themselves don't know how to face such a rapidly changing world.

Many many challenges but don't shoot the messenger (Drucker). He has an important and very valid point which we must address in some form or another. The professional schools ARE NOT desiged to function in a highly dynamic world. Don't lose track of that fact or continue to pay the consequences.

Posted by BT Hathaway at September 26, 2006 3:39 PM

BT -
thanks for the context, that makes loads of sense. Enter Pareto - Drucker in this scenario is focused on the 80% who muddle through - first, do no harm. Much of Drucker's work also deals with optimizing results with the 20% who rise above. Peters' tries to transition the 20% of doers into the 4%(20% of 20%) who change the world.

Posted by Jimi at September 27, 2006 9:47 AM