Page 84 - The Drucker Lectures

8

Claremont Address

1974

adies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to be here today,
Land I’m very pleased and proud and happy to be a mem-
ber of the Claremont Graduate School community where I have
been now for three very happy years. You asked me today to talk
about management and what is ahead for it. Perhaps the best
way to start might be to say that for the last maybe 25 years, the
whole world has been in a management boom.
That’s what the Japanese call it. Until 30-odd years ago, man-
agement was a fairly hidden and esoteric concern of a few people
here, there, and yonder. In fact, most managers didn’t know that
what they were practicing was management. And between you
and me, most didn’t. What was the very small esoteric concern
became front-page news. When I first was ordered to be inter-
ested in management I had no such intention until the colonel
who commanded me called me in and said, “As of tomorrow you
are a management consultant.” I said, “Sir, what is a manage-
ment consultant?” And he said, “Young man, don’t be imperti-
nent.” Which simply means he didn’t know, either.
So I had to learn management overnight. It was very easy
because the entire literature on general management at that time
was a small bookshelf of six to eight books and some articles.
Today I think we publish about a thousand books annually that
are indexed by the librarians as general management. That gives

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