How the Cliff Richard of Management Changed My Life

By Matt Driver, Management Futures consultant

It-s a name I-d heard often and for many years. But I would have been hard pushed to summarise quite why at the drop of a hat. My memory was jogged by an FT article announcing Peter Drucker-s 95th birthday. Ninety-five years young in a very real sense.

In fact, uniquely for a management writer, Drucker has published books in each of seven decades from the 1930s to the 1990s. He-s also written two novels. And the reason he's hard to pin down is because other people may now be taking the credit for much of what he invented.

Take MBO - management by objectives - the subject of much excitement 20-30 years ago. It derived from his thesis that an organisation needed objectives to focus its action. And this theme still underpins much current writing on management and motivation. You may know about goal theory, performance management- or the SMART acronym. They all began with him.

Drucker was probably also the first to distinguish effectiveness from efficiency in business. Not the same he argued. And his astute analysis spawned whole industries around - leading versus managing, strategic thinking and doing the right thing.

What about the balanced scorecard - widely loved and even more widely hated. A really useful business tool crassly misunderstood and misused. Well, much of it can be traced back to his thinking - for example the need for organisations to foster, nurture and measure innovation as well as the need to apply a balanced array of financial measures.

The last few years have seen a search for useful metaphors for management and leadership in drama, art and music. Drucker early-on recognised and built upon the parallels between an orchestra and a business organisation seeing the relationship between conductor and musician as the model for that between manager and staff.

And what is more -21st Century- than the rise of the knowledge worker and the primary importance of intellectual capital? Yes, he foresaw this 35 years ago in his book The Age of Discontinuity.

And the school of personal development, 360º feedback and learning in management - he made early contributions on how to maximise your preferred learning style and the importance of self-diagnosis and self-knowledge in order to manage an organisation effectively.

So thank you Peter Drucker. I'd forgotten how much of a prophet you had been. Other management gurus like Warren Bennis see you as the founder of management and hence the management book . To which I must add the management course - because without you, sirI wouldn't have a job.