Page 46 - The Drucker Lectures

PART III

1960s

ack Beatty, Peter Drucker’s biographer, has pointed out that, in spite of
Jits provocative title, Drucker’s 1968 book The Age of Discontinuity “all
but ignores” the most convulsive events of the day: student protests, the
Civil Rights movement, and Vietnam. And yet, he added, The Age of Dis-
continuity is “a very 1960s book in its conviction that truth lies under the
surface” and “trends under the trends.” Specifically, what Drucker set out
to chronicle were big, if little noticed, changes in the “social and cultural
reality” that seemed likely “to mold and shape the closing decades of the
twentieth century.” Among the “new industries already in sight,” Drucker
proclaimed, was one called “information systems.” “The impact of cheap,
reliable, fast, and universally available information,” he wrote, “will eas-
ily be as great as was the impact of electricity. Certainly young people,
a few years hence, will use information systems as their normal tools,
much as they now use the typewriter or the telephone.” Of course, few
people besides Drucker could see all this back then. But Drucker wasn’t
only profound and prescient. He was also practical—a trait exhibited
in another Drucker classic of the decade, The Effective Executive, pub-
lished in 1967. By teaching principles of time management, the elements
of decision making, and building on one’s strengths, Drucker showcased
his ability to share insights on an altogether different level: not that of
society or the organization, but of the individual practitioner striving to
“manage oneself.”

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