Peter Drucker

[red baron]

C'mon, people! Peter Drucker, for Pete's sake (no pun intended). This guy was absolutely fabulous at making Peter Drucker a millionaire, or making him at least very comfortably off. His main "virtue" was couching the obvious in abstruse verbiage, and then selling it to idiots in management. The fact that he was consulted by the author of "The Purpose-Driven Life" alone should tell you everything. Have any of you ever read that piece of drivel?

[igatenby]

Ahh - no - so tell us about the purpose driven life - who wrote it, etc

[red baron]

Can't tell you much about it, because I only got as far as the part in which the author unmistakeably implies that if you're not a Christian, you're doomed to hell and damnation, before I gagged. The overall theme of the book is that you must believe in god (preferably a fundamentalist Christian god) in order to give your life purpose.

Makes you wonder what happened to Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Lao Tse, The Buddha, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and all of the rest of the philosophers.

The author, "Dr." Rick Warren, is a fundamentalist preacher in, I believe, California (where else?). He's of course achieved his purpose, which is to sell about 19 million copies of his book and to greatly increase his no doubt highly contributing congregation.

[Carlsboats]

Don't know whether your concern is with Drucker or with that purpose-driven author/self promoter, but the blast at Peter Drucker is way off the mark.
Having spent a full day with him, one-on-one, I can speak from personal knowledge: The man had an
incredible grasp of the issues facing large organizations and, instead of speaking the usual academic gobbledegook, he dealt in direct, plain language.
One thing that amazed me was the amount of detailed info. he had about the company I worked for at the time. Another thing was his ability to come up with specific ideas for change. E.G. he told me that my company was "stupid" not to have entered the health care field by putting together a set of instruments we were already using in our own laboratories, and providing lab services to hospitals that were notorious for their high-cost, error-prone lab work. Years later, my company did just that (without bothering even to mention that Drucker had proposed this) and made a ton of money.

[red baron]

As a personnel intern in the Dept of Defense a lot of years ago, I had to sit through more tapes by Drucker than I would have wanted to see in a lifetime. The guy had a talent for stating the obvious (your anecdote re your company only confirms it; and, yes, management of that company should have seen what he pointed out - it would have been at least one way to justify their no doubt over-inflated salaries), and perhaps that was his virtue. It certainly made a lot of money for him. As for me, I was tired of him in the first 5 or 10 minutes of the first tape.

[Alan D. Hyde]

Coaching the FUNDAMENTALS is what, in the end, frequently matters the most.

I've known three great, and very successful, coaches, two of whom were also great men.

They all did this, and it was a key to their successes. It's remarkable how often the obvious is ignored, until someone points it out and works on it. Sometimes, it's only obvious in retrospect.

Alan

[ 11-30-2005, 01:22 PM: Message edited by: Alan D. Hyde ]

[Alan D. Hyde]

Follow this link to a recent Economist article on Peter Drucker. It's well worth your time---

http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5165460

***

Alan