Page 13 - The Drucker Lectures

x [ Introduction

Drucker can be humble and self-deprecating in his comments, vari-
ously conceding: “I don’t even know where to begin” and “I know I don’t
make sense.” But mostly he is authoritative, speaking in absolutes. “Not
one government program since 1950 has worked,” he declares in a 1991
address at the Economic Club of Washington.
He can be shockingly bold. For example, in a 2001 lecture, Drucker
goes so far as to call W. Edwards Deming, the quality guru, “totally ob-
solete.” He can also push too far, suggesting in a 1997 speech on the
changing world economy that “it is anybody’s guess whether there will be
a united Canada in 10 years.”
Many of these lectures are notable for their erudition; an offhand ref-
erence to an eighteenth-century politician or a nineteenth-century novel-
ist is not uncommon. At the same time, Drucker was never one to lose his
head in the clouds. “Will you please be terribly nuts-and-bolts-focused in
your questions,” he requests at the end of a lecture at New York University
in 1981, “because we have dealt in the stratosphere much too long.”
Those acquainted with Drucker’s oeuvre will find many familiar themes
here: managing oneself, the value of volunteering, the need for every or-
ganization to focus on performance and results. At times, he’d use his
lectures to test out ideas that would later find their way into print—the
classroom serving as a kind of petri dish for his prose.
If there is a single subject that threads through this book it is one
that Drucker spent the last half-century of his career contemplating: the
historic shift from manufacturing to knowledge work. In these lectures,
Drucker explores the implications of engaging our brains, instead of our
brawn, from a variety of angles. He starts in 1957, where his remarks
to an international management conference contain one of his earliest
known references to “people who work by knowledge.”
Yet there are also plenty of fresh insights—and more than a few sur-
prises—to be found in these pages, even for the most diehard Drucker
devotee. As a speaker, Drucker tends to be a bit less formal than in his
writing. He is also apt to personalize his lectures, leavening his oratory
with stories about his wife, Doris, his children, and his grandchildren. The