Peter Drucker’s Recommendations for Summer Reading: Five Management Classics

I receive countless requests for summer reading suggestions and when I offer them, the frequent response is, “Haven’t heard of them. Are they bestsellers? I’m only interested in the best ever.” Well OK, but a majority of the bestsellers (whatever the year) are neither the best ever nor even the best that year. Like sparklers, they dazzle briefly, attract attention, and then….

Many book buyers resemble lemmings in their purchase decisions that are wholly determined by what “they say” (i.e. bestseller lists). I prefer books that resemble Bunsen burners but apparently my opinion means little, if anything, when juxtaposed with what “they” say.

But who wishes to take on Peter Drucker? By all means be my guest.

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Rick Wartzman and published in Bloomberg Businessweek. To read the complete article, please click here.

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Peter Drucker looked to the following still-oh-so-relevant books, published between 1911 and 1941, for guidance and edification

Although Peter Drucker was a self-described workaholic, he did take time off each summer to hike amid the peaks of Colorado, reflect on the previous year’s successes and failures, and, of course, read.

As you head to the beach or the mountains with your own stack of books (or your Kindle, Nook, or iPad), keep in mind five classics about management and leadership that Drucker himself loved. All appeared before his own landmark The Practice of Management was published in 1954. “Every one of these books,” Drucker noted, “laid firm and lasting foundations.”

1. The Principles of Scientific Management by Frederick Winslow Taylor

Although it has become fashionable to disparage Taylor and his methods for spurring industrial efficiency, Drucker never wavered in his admiration for the mechanical engineer or his ideas. Indeed, Drucker asserted that scientific management may well be the greatest “contribution America has made to Western thought since the Federalist Papers.” And he believed that Taylor’s concepts weren’t just instrumental for raising the productivity of those in factories; they’re crucial as well, Drucker said, “to learn how to make knowledge-work productive.” It is also worth pointing out, in an age when many top executives have enjoyed skyrocketing pay packages while their employees’ incomes have stagnated, that Taylor urged a more equitable structure. “The principal object of management,” he declared at the start of The Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911, “should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee.”

2. Industrial and General Administration by Henri Fayol

Originally published in 1916, Fayol’s writings reflect the mind not only of a sage theorist but that of an able practitioner; for many years, he ran a French mining company with about 1,000 employees. Fayol’s contributions include laying out a fundamental framework for administration: forecasting, planning, organizing, coordinating, commanding, and controlling. Drucker said that although “Fayol’s language is outdated … his insights into the work of management and its organization are still fresh and original.” In fact, many businesses would do well to study Fayol’s notions of generating esprit de corps and getting the most out of employees up and down the organization. “Every intermediate link in the chain,” Fayol wrote, “can and must be a source of energy and ideas; there is, in each of these links, or men, a power of initiative, which, if properly used, can considerably extend a manager’s range of activity.”

3. The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization by Elton Mayo

Decades before today’s management consultants began speaking of the need to engage all employees and ensure that everyone across the enterprise is aligned around a common set of big-picture goals, Mayo called for the same basic approach in this 1933 book. “It is not enough to have an enlightened company policy, a carefully devised (and blueprinted) plan,” Mayo wrote. “To stop at this point … has much the same effect as administering medicine to a recalcitrant patient. It may be good for him, but he is not persuaded. … This is the essential nature of the human; with all the will in the world to cooperate, he finds it difficult to persist in action for an end he cannot dimly see.” Although Drucker praised Mayo’s book, the two men got into it during an address that Mayo delivered at Harvard Business School in 1947. Drucker questioned Mayo’s philosophy, and Mayo thumbed his nose, literally, at Drucker. The two quickly apologized to each other.

Happy summer. Happy reading.

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To read the complete article, please click here.


Rick Wartzman
is  the executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University.

 


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