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The Daily Drucker

366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

by Peter Drucker with Joseph Maciariello

Amazon link: The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

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I highly recommend this book to everyone—even if you have other Drucker books. It (along with the links below) opens numerous mental doorways to valuable and genuinely interesting things to do for the rest of your life. These are roads to rising above being just another operational cog in the system. In other words this page is part of a mental radar system — part of the conceptual resource sub-system: loading, refreshing, attention-directing. Other radar sub-systems involve current events—Mike Kami's "razor blade reading and clue management" and situations—Management Cases

The entries relating to managing oneself—September—are the foundation on which everything else builds. Drucker suggests building your life on your strengths and values.

I suggest getting through it several times very rapidly—to get a view of the entire brainscape—before using it daily. It may point you in the right direction and it will help you not get blind-sided. There are countless organizations that were doing great at one point in their history … How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In and Chaotics

One important idea to remember: situations always trump formulas (calendarize this?). More suggestions below …


These are attention directing tools.

The ideas introduced on this page are an early stage in calendarization—getting ideas on your radar. Each topic that goes on your radar will need to be calendarized.

These are time investments. It is not possible to work on things that aren't on your active radar!!! You need to actively work on it—calendarize it. See September 1-3 articles for "making time."

This book provides the means for rapidly enhancing your radar, but I can't swear that it includes all of Drucker's concepts and ideas. Each day's entry contains a source at the bottom. You can find links to almost all of these sources on the Peter Drucker page.

Remembering Peter Drucker from the November 2009 issue of The Economist.

Managing Knowledge Means Managing Oneself (the last few paragraphs)

Career and life vision guidance from Peter Drucker

The second half of your life


Assumed Background Awareness

The Changing Social and Economic Picture (above)

Economic Content and Structure (above)

Organization evolution (above)
(consider the entire life story of Apple)
Management and the World's Work

Larger view

Managing Oneself (above)
"This is who I am"
(the baseline for a life
embedded in
the changing social and economic picture)


These are attention directing tools.

A person stands before a picture and says: 'I like it' or 'I don't like it.'

After a course on art appreciation that same person stands before a picture but now has a handful of attention directing tools:

… look at the composition;
… look at the choice of colours;
… look at the use of light and shade;
… look at the brush work;
… look at the way the clothing is treated;
… look at the background;
… look at the background figures.

After a time this richer attention scan becomes automatic.

In addition there are things that will now be noticed that may indicate a period of painting or a particular painter or a particular period of a particular painting (Picasso late period, Warhol early period).


We cannot see things unless we are prepared to see them.

That is why science advances by fits and starts as paradigms change and we are allowed to see things differently.

That is why the analysis of data can never produce all the ideas present in that data.

That is why analysis is a limited tool, not the complete one we have always believed it to be.

The James Gleick book on Chaos: Making a New Science shows how the pioneers in this field went back to look at old data but to look at it with new perceptions and could now see new things.

Edward de Bono


Selected quotes from the FOREWORD; PREFACE; and INTRODUCTION

... replace the quest for success with the quest for contribution. The critical question is not, "How can I achieve?" but "What can I contribute?"


Drucker's primary contribution is not a single idea, but rather an entire body of work that has one gigantic advantage: nearly all of it is essentially right.

Drucker has an uncanny ability to develop insights about the workings of the social world, and to later be proved right by history.

His first book, The End of Economic Man, published in 1939, sought to explain the origins of totalitarianism; after the fall of France in 1940, Winston Churchill made it a required part of the book kit issued to every graduate of the British Officer's Candidate School.

His 1946 book The Concept of the Corporation analyzed the technocratic corporation, based upon an in-depth look at General Motors.

It so rattled senior management in its accurate foreshadowing of future challenges to the corporate state that it was essentially banned at GM during the Sloan era.

Drucker's 1964 book was so far ahead of its time in laying out the principles of corporate strategy that his publisher convinced him to abandon the title Business Strategies in favor of Managing for Results, because the term "strategy" was utterly foreign to the language of business.


There are two ways to change the world: with the pen (the use of ideas) and with the sword (the use of power).

Drucker chooses the pen, and has rewired the brains of thousands who carry the sword.

When in 1956 David Packard sat down to type out the objectives for the Hewlett-Packard Company, he'd been shaped by Drucker's writings, and very likely used The Practice of Management—which still stands as perhaps the most important management book ever written—as his guide.

In our research for the book Built to Last, Jerry Porras and I came across a number of great companies whose leaders had been shaped by Drucker's writings, including Merck, Procter & Gamble, Ford, General Electric, and Motorola.

Multiply this impact across thousands of organizations of all types—from police departments to symphony orchestras to government agencies and business corporations—and it is hard to escape the conclusion that Drucker is one of the most influential individuals of the twentieth century.


Drucker's genius shines best in the short paragraph or single sentence that cuts through the clutter and messiness of a complex world and exposes a truth. Like a Zen poet, Drucker packs universal truth into just a few words; we can return to his teachings repeatedly, each time with a deeper level of understanding.


"Just go out and make yourself useful,"


But the most important part of this book is the blank spaces at the bottom of its pages. They are what the readers will contribute, their actions, decisions and the results of these decisions.

I suggest a different work approach:

First don't write in the book—figure out a way to make notes electronically.

Explore the Drucker guidance "articles" above. Rapidly read through the book (~10-15 pages per night), mark areas of interest using one of the worksheets below and do a very rough calendarization—identifying your life stages and milestones. Maybe connect each article to résumé planning. Maybe assign value and radar ratings.

Unique, sortable ratings:

Likability (the red hat): ll5great ll4good ll3OK ll2don't~like ll1hate~it

Timing or radar rings: rr0 rr1n7d rr2n14d rr3next rr4vsoon rr5soon rr6later rr7nxtlstage rr8last rr9aban

Value assessment (Six value medals): vv0core vv0navigating-toward vv1essential vv2-to-outline vv2important vv3interesting vv4awareness

On a worksheet the repeated characters can be dropped. The repeated characters can be used in text expansion applications to insert the remainder of the phrase

Try to discern a general pattern in your long-term interests—Early Career Work, Managing Oneself, Executive Effectiveness, Life Design, Organization Evolution etc.

At some point you probably want to veer off into The Essential Drucker. It goes into much greater depth on a shorter list of topics. Be sure to check out the introduction.

Explore the remainder (the big conceptual parts) of my Time-life navigation site to get a complete interest profile. Get organized to convert concepts to daily action.

Create mind maps for major individual topic pages (life building blocks). Thinking broad and detailed

Larger view


One word of advice: Look for "the future that has already happened." If you can identify and act upon trends that are just now emerging …


"I have many times listened to Peter Drucker address executives, and I have on a few occasions seen him in action as a consultant.

In his teaching and consulting he has impressed me most by the consistency and effectiveness of the approach he uses.

First, he always makes sure he has defined the problem correctly.

Next, he seems to weave a tapestry, bringing his vast knowledge to bear upon the specific problem, and putting in "stitches," or specific portions of the solution to the problem.

Finally, once the problem has been circumscribed and the tapestry woven, he outlines the specific actions that should be taken to solve the problem.

He then tells his audiences, "Don't tell me you enjoyed this; tell me what you will do differently on Monday morning."

Joseph A. Maciariello


Worksheets:

The Daily Drucker table of contents worksheet

printable pdf

Excel worksheet

The worksheets above can be used for identifying areas of interest and beginning a crude calendarization.


These are attention directing tools. Within each there may be individual sentences that warrant calendarization

Sample Days:

28 SEP — Harmonize the Immediate and Long-range Future

A manager must, so to speak, keep his nose to the grindstone while lifting his eyes to the hills—quite an acrobatic feat.

A manager has two specific tasks.

The first is creation of a true whole that is larger than the sum of its parts, a productive entity that turns out more than the sum of the resources put into it.

The second specific task of the manager is to harmonize in every decision and action the requirements of the immediate and of the long-range future.

A manager cannot sacrifice either without endangering the enterprise.


If a manager does not take care of the next hundred days, there will be no next hundred years.

Whatever the manager does should be sound in expediency as well as in basic long-range objective and principle.

And where he cannot harmonize the two time dimensions, he must at least balance them.

He must calculate the sacrifice he imposes on the long-range future of the enterprise to protect its immediate interests, or the sacrifice he makes today for the sake of tomorrow.

He must limit either sacrifice as much as possible.

And he must repair as soon as possible the damage it inflicts.

He lives and acts in two time dimensions, and is responsible for the performance of the whole enterprise and of his own component in it.

ACTION POINT:

Develop a system of performance measures that will lead to maximizing the total wealth-producing capacity of your organization.

Include both short-term measures and long-term measures, as well as quantitative and qualitative measures.

Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices


7 MAR — Creating a True Whole

Create a true whole greater than the sum of its parts.

A manager has the task of creating a true whole that is larger than the sum of its parts.

One analogy is the task of the conductor of a symphony orchestra, through whose effort, vision, and leadership individual instrumental parts become the living whole of a musical performance.

But the conductor has the composer's score; he is only interpreter.

The manager is both composer and conductor.

The task of creating a genuine whole also requires that the manager, in every one of her acts, consider simultaneously the performance and results of the enterprise as a whole and the diverse activities needed to achieve synchronized performance.

It is here, perhaps, that the comparison with the orchestra conductor fits best.

A conductor must always hear both the whole orchestra and, say, the second oboe.

Similarly, a manager must always consider both the overall performance of the enterprise and, say, the market research activity needed.

By raising the performance of the whole, she creates scope and challenge for market research.

By improving the performance of market research, she makes possible better overall business results.

The manager must simultaneously ask two double-barreled questions:

"What better business performance is needed and what does this require of what activities?"

And "What better performances are the activities capable of and what improvement in business results will they make possible?"

Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

Connect to Peter Drucker Social Political Ecologist


13 FEB — The Nature of Freedom

Freedom is never a release and always a responsibility.

Freedom is not fun.

It is not the same as individual happiness, nor is it security or peace or progress.

It is a responsible choice.

Freedom is not so much a right as a duty.

Real freedom is not freedom from something; that would be license.

It is freedom to choose between doing or not doing something, to act one way or another, to hold one belief or the opposite.

It is not "fun" but the heaviest burden laid on man:

to decide his own individual conduct as well as the conduct of society and to be responsible for both decisions.

"The Freedom of Industrial Man,"
The Virginia Quarterly Review


26 JAN — A Social Ecologist

For me the tension between the need for continuity and the need for innovation and change was central to society and civilization.

I consider myself a "social ecologist," concerned with man's man-made environment the way the natural ecologist studies the biological environment.

The term "social ecology" is my own coinage.

But the discipline itself boasts an old and distinguished lineage.

Its greatest document is Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

But no one is as close to me in temperament, concepts, and approach as the mid-Victorian Englishman Walter Bagehot.

Living (as I have) in an age of great social change, Bagehot first saw the emergence of new institutions:

civil service and cabinet government, as cores of a functioning democracy, and banking as the center of a functioning economy.


A hundred years after Bagehot, I was first to identify management as the new social institution of the emerging society of organizations and, a little later, to spot the emergence of knowledge as the new central resource, and knowledge workers as the new ruling class of a society that is not only "post-industrial" but post-socialist and, increasingly, post-capitalist.

As it had been for Bagehot, for me too the tension between the need for continuity and the need for innovation and change was central to society and civilization.

Thus, I know what Bagehot meant when he said that he saw himself sometimes as a liberal Conservative and sometimes as a conservative Liberal but never as a "conservative Conservative" or a "liberal Liberal."

ACTION POINT: Are you and your organization change agents? What steps can you take to both change and balance change with stability?

The Ecological Vision


27 MAY — Management: A Practice

The test of any policy in management … is not whether the answer is right or wrong, but whether it works.

The GM executives believed that they had discovered principles and that those principles were absolutes, like laws of nature.

I, by contrast, have always held that principles of this kind, being man-made, are at best heuristic.

This has been the one point on which my approach to management has always differed from that of the writers or theoreticians on the subject—and the reason, perhaps, that I have never been quite respectable in the eyes of academia.

I do believe that there are basic values, especially human ones.

But I do not believe that there is "one correct answer."

There are answers that have a high probability of being the wrong ones—at least to the point where one does not even try them unless all else has failed.

But the test of any policy in management or in any other social discipline is not whether the answer is right or wrong, but whether it works.

Management, I have always believed, is not a branch of theology but, at bottom, a clinical discipline.

The test, as in the practice of medicine, is not whether the treatment is "scientific" but whether the patient recovers.

Concept of the Corporation


25 SEP — Controls Should Focus on Results

What today's organization needs are synthetic sense organs for the outside.

Every social institution exists to contribute to society, economy, and individual.

In consequence results exist only on the outside—in economy, in society, and with the customer.

It is the customer only who creates a profit.

Everything inside a business creates only costs, is only a "cost center."

But results are entrepreneurial.

Yet we do not have adequate, let alone reliable, information regarding the "outside."

The century of patient analysis of managerial, inside phenomena, events and data, the century of patient, skillful work on the individual operations and tasks within the business, has no counterpart with respect to the entrepreneurial job.

We can easily record and therefore quantify efficiency, that is, efforts.

It is of little value to have the most efficient engineering department if it designs the wrong product.

And it mattered little, I daresay, during the period of IBM's great expansion in the fifties and sixties how "efficient" its operations were; its basic entrepreneurial idea was the right, the effective one.


The outside, the area of results, is much less accessible than the inside.

The central problem of executives in the large organization is their insulation from the outside.

What today's organization therefore needs are synthetic sense organs for the outside.

If modern controls are to make a contribution, it would be, above all, here.

Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices


2 JAN — Identifying the Future

The important thing is to identify the "future that has already happened."

Futurists always measure their batting average by counting how many things they have predicted that have come true.

They never count how many important things come true that they did not predict.

Everything a forecaster predicts may come to pass.

Yet, he may not have seen the most meaningful of the emergent realities or, worse still, may not have paid attention to them.

There is no way to avoid this irrelevancy in forecasting, for the important and distinctive are always the result of changes in values, perception, and goals, that is, in things that one can divine but not forecast.


But the most important work of the executive is to identify the changes that have already happened.

The important challenge in society, economics, politics, is to exploit the changes that have already occurred and to use them as opportunities.

The important thing is to identify the "future that has already happened"—and to develop a methodology for perceiving and analyzing these changes.

A good deal of this methodology is incorporated in my 1985 book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which shows how one systematically looks to the changes in society, in demographics, in meaning, in science and technology, as opportunities to make the future.

The Ecological Vision

The Age of Discontinuity


12 MAY — The Manufacturing Paradox

How do you get far more output with far fewer workers?

The most believable forecast for 2020 suggests that manufacturing output in the developed countries will at least double, while manufacturing employment will shrink to 10 to 12 percent of the total workforce. What has changed manufacturing, and sharply pushed up productivity, are new concepts, such as "lean manufacturing.":

Information and automation are less important than new theories of manufacturing, which are an advance comparable to the arrival of mass production eighty years ago.

The decline in manufacturing as a creator of wealth and jobs will inevitably bring about a new protectionism, once again echoing what happened earlier in agriculture.

The fewer farm voters there are, the more important the "farm vote" has become.

As numbers have shrunk, farmers have become a unified special-interest group that carries disproportionate clout in all rich countries.

Managing in the Next Society


9 JAN — The New Corporation's Persona

In the Next Society's corporation, top management will be the company.

Everything else can be outsourced.

Increasingly, in the Next Society's corporation, top management will, in fact, be the company.

This top management's responsibilities will cover the entire organization's

direction, planning, strategy, values, and principles;

its structure and relationships between its various members;

its alliances, partnerships, and joint ventures; and

its research, design, and innovation.


Establishing a new corporate persona calls for a change in the corporation's values.

And that may well be the most important task for top management.

In the half century after the Second World War, the business corporation has brilliantly proven itself as an economic organization, as a creator of wealth and jobs.

In the Next Society, the biggest challenge for the large company and especially for the multinational may be its social legitimacy—its values, its mission, its vision.

Everything else can be outsourced.

Managing in the Next Society

The Next Society (Corpedia Online Program)


17 JAN — Management: The Central Social Function

Noneconomic institutions need a yardstick that does for them what profitability does for business.

Nonbusiness institutions flock in increasing numbers to business management to learn from it how to manage themselves.

The hospital, the armed service, the Catholic diocese, the civil service—all want to go to school for business management.


This does not mean that business management can be transferred to other, nonbusiness institutions.

On the contrary, the first thing these institutions have to learn from business management is that management begins with the setting of objectives and that, therefore, noneconomic institutions, such as a university or a hospital, will also need very different management from that of a business.

But these institutions are right in seeing business management as the prototype.

Business, far from being exceptional, is simply the first of the species and the one we have studied the most intensively.

Noneconomic institutions need a yardstick that does for them what profitability does for the business.

"Profitability," in other words, rather than being the "exception" and distinct from "human" or "social" needs, emerges, in the pluralist society of organizations, as the prototype of the measurement needed by every institution in order to be managed and manageable.

The Ecological Vision


10 FEB — Modern Organization Must Be a Destabilizer

Only a society in dynamic disequilibrium has stability and cohesion.

Society, community, and family are all conserving institutions.

They try to maintain stability and to prevent, or at least to slow, change.

And yet we also know that theories, values, and all the artifacts of human minds do age and rigidify, becoming obsolete, becoming afflictions.


Yet "revolutions" every generation, as was recommended by Thomas Jefferson, are not the solution.

We know that "revolution" is not achievement and the new dawn.

It results from senile decay, from the bankruptcy of ideas and institutions, from a failure of self-renewal.

The only way in which an institution—whether a government, a university, a business, a labor union, an army—can maintain continuity is by building systematic, organized innovation into its very structure.

Institutions, systems, policies, eventually outlive themselves, as do products, processes, and services.

They do it when they accomplish their objectives, and they do it when they fail to accomplish their objectives.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are thus needed in society as much as in the economy, in public service institutions as much as in business.

The modern organization must be a destabilizer; it must be organized for innovation.

Managing in a Time of Great Change

The Ecological Vision

Innovation and Entrepreneurship


2 MAR — Test of Innovation

Measure innovations by what they contribute to market and customer.

The test of an innovation is whether it creates value.

Innovation means the creation of new value and new satisfaction for the customer.

A novelty only creates amusement.

Yet, again and again, managements decide to innovate for no other reason than that they are bored with doing the same thing or making the same product day in and day out.

The test of an innovation, as well as the test of "quality," is not "Do we like it?"

It is "Do customers want it and will they pay for it?"


Organizations measure innovations not by their scientific or technological importance but by what they contribute to market and customer.

They consider social innovation to be as important as technological innovation.

Installment selling may have had a greater impact on economics and markets than most of the great scientific advances in this century.

The Frontiers of Management

Management Challenges for the 21st Century


4 JUL — Communicate and Test Assumptions

The theory of the business is a discipline.


The theory of the business must be known and understood throughout the organization.

This is easy in an organization's early days.

But as it becomes successful, an organization tends increasingly to take its theory for granted, becoming less and less conscious of it.

Then the organization becomes sloppy.

It begins to cut corners.

It begins to pursue what is expedient rather than what is right.

It stops thinking.

It stops questioning.

It remembers the answers but has forgotten the questions.

The theory of the business becomes "culture."

But culture is no substitute for discipline, and the theory of the business is a discipline.


The theory of the business has to be tested constantly.

It is not graven on tablets of stone.

It is a hypothesis.

And it is a hypothesis about things that are in constant flux—society, markets, customers, technology.

And so, built into the theory of the business must be the ability to change itself.

Some theories are so powerful that they last for a long time.

Eventually every theory becomes obsolete and then invalid.

It happened to the GMs and the AT&Ts.

It happened to IBM.

It is also happening to the rapidly unraveling Japanese keiretsu.

Managing in a Time of Great Change


26 MAR — Management of the Multinational

The multinationals of 2025 are likely to be held together and controlled by strategy.

Statistically, multinational companies play much the same part in the world economy today as they did in 1913.

But they have become very different animals.

Multinationals in 1913 were domestic firms with subsidiaries abroad, each of them self-contained, in charge of a politically defined territory, and highly autonomous.

Multinationals now tend to be organized globally along product or service lines.

But like the multinationals of 1913, they are held together and controlled by ownership.

By contrast, the multinationals of 2025 are likely to be held together and controlled by strategy.

There will still be ownership, of course.

But alliances, joint ventures, minority stakes, know-how agreements and contracts, will increasingly be the building blocks of a confederation.


This kind of organization will need a new kind of top management.

In most countries, and even in a good many large and complex companies, top management is still seen as an extension of operating management.

Tomorrow's top management, however, is likely to be a distinct and separate organ: it will stand for the company.

Managing in the Next Society


5 SEP — Focus on Contribution

The question "What should I contribute?" gives freedom because it gives responsibility.

The great majority of executives tend to focus downward.

They are occupied with efforts rather than with results.

They worry over what the organization and their superiors "owe" them and should do for them.

And they are conscious above all of the authority they "should have."

As a result, they render themselves ineffectual.

The effective executive focuses on contribution.

He looks up from his work and outward toward goals.

He asks: "What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?"

His stress is on responsibility.


The focus on contribution is the key to effectiveness: in a person's own work—its content, its level, its standards, and its impacts; in his relations with others—his superiors, his associates, his subordinates; in his use of the tools of the executive such as meetings or reports.

The focus on contribution turns the executive's attention away from his own specialty, his own narrow skills, his own department, and toward the performance of the whole.

It turns his attention to the outside, the only place where there are results

The Effective Executive
Management Challenges for the 21st Century


18 SEP — Managing Oneself: Revolution in Society

Managing oneself is based on these realities: Workers are likely to outlive organizations, and the knowledge worker has mobility.

Managing oneself is a REVOLUTION in human affairs.

It requires new and unprecedented things from the individual, and especially from the knowledge worker.

For, in effect, it demands that each knowledge worker think and behave as a chief executive officer.

It also requires an almost 180-degree change in the knowledge workers' thoughts and actions from what most of us still take for granted as the way to think and the way to act.


The shift from manual workers who do as they are being told—either by the task or by the boss—to knowledge workers who have to manage themselves profoundly challenges social structure.

For every existing society, even the most "individualist" one, takes two things for granted, if only subconsciously: Organizations outlive workers, and most people stay put.

Managing oneself is based on the very opposite realities.

In the United States MOBILITY is accepted.

But even in the United States, workers outliving organizations—and with it the need to be prepared for a second and different half of one's life—is a revolution for which practically no one is prepared.

Nor is any existing institution, for example, the present retirement system.

Management Challenges for the 21st Century


10 JAN — Management as the Alternative to Tyranny

The alternative to autonomous institutions that function and perform is not freedom. It is totalitarian tyranny.

If the institutions of our pluralist society of institutions do not perform in responsible autonomy, we will not have individualism and a society in which there is a chance for people to fulfill themselves.

We will, instead, impose on ourselves complete regimentation in which no one will be allowed autonomy.

We will have Stalinism rather than participatory democracy, let alone the joyful spontaneity of doing one's own thing.

Tyranny is the only alternative to strong, performing autonomous institutions.


Tyranny substitutes one absolute boss for the pluralism of competing institutions.

It substitutes terror for responsibility.

It does indeed do away with the institutions, but only by submerging all of them in the one all embracing bureaucracy of the apparat.

It does produce goods and services, though only fitfully, wastefully, at a low level, and at an enormous cost in suffering, humiliation, and frustration.

To make our institutions perform responsibly, autonomously, and on a high level of achievement is thus the only safeguard of freedom and dignity in the pluralist society of institutions.

Performing, responsible management is the alternative to tyranny and our only protection against it.

Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices


The Definitive Drucker contents outline

The Definitive Drucke

Amazon link: The Definitive Drucker: Challenges For Tomorrow's Executives — Final Advice From the Father of Modern Management


These are attention directing tools.

Daily Drucker Contents

  • January
    1. Integrity in Leadership
    2. Identifying the Future
    3. Management Is Indispensable
    4. Organizational Inertia
    5. Abandonment
    6. Practice of Abandonment
    7. Knowledge Workers: Asset Not Cost
    8. Autonomy in Knowledge Work
    9. The New Corporation's Persona
    10. Management as the Alternative to Tyranny
    11. Management and Theology
    12. Practice Comes First
    13. Management and the Liberal Arts
    14. The Managerial Attitude
    15. The Spirit of an Organization
    16. The Function of Management Is to Produce Results
    17. Management: The Central Social Function
    18. Society of Performing Organizations
    19. The Purpose of Society
    20. Nature of Man and Society
    21. Profit's Function
    22. Economics as a Social Dimension
    23. Private Virtue and the Commonweal
    24. Feedback: Key to Continuous Learning
    25. Reinvent Yourself
    26. A Social Ecologist
    27. The Discipline of Management
    28. Controlled Experiment in Mismanagement
    29. Performance: The Test of Management
    30. Terrorism and Basic Trends
    31. A Functioning Society
  • February
    1. Crossing the Divide
    2. Face Reality
    3. The Management Revolution
    4. Knowledge and Technology
    5. Shrinking of the Younger Population
    6. The Transnational Company
    7. The Educated Person
    8. Balance Continuity and Change
    9. Organizations Destabilize Communities
    10. Modern Organization Must Be a Destabilizer
    11. Human Factor in Management
    12. Role of the Bystander
    13. The Nature of Freedom
    14. Demands on Political Leadership
    15. Salvation by Society
    16. Need for a Harmony of Interests
    17. Social Purpose for Society
    18. Reinventing Government
    19. Reprivatization
    20. Management and Economic Development
    21. Failure of Central Planning
    22. The Pork-Barrel State
    23. The New Tasks of Government
    24. Legitimacy of the Corporation
    25. Governance of the Corporation
    26. Balancing Three Corporate Dimensions
    27. Defining Business Purpose and Mission
    28. Defining Business Purpose and Mission: The Customer
    29. Understanding What the Customer Buys
  • March
    1. The Change Leader
    2. Test of Innovation
    3. Knowledge External to the Enterprise
    4. In Innovation, Emphasize the Big Idea
    5. Managing for the Future
    6. Innovation and Risk Taking
    7. Creating a True Whole
    8. Turbulence: Threat or Opportunity?
    9. Organize for Constant Change
    10. Searching for Change
    11. Piloting Change
    12. The Purpose of a Business
    13. Converting Strategic Plans to Action
    14. Universal Entrepreneurial Disciplines
    15. Managing for the Short Term and Long Term
    16. Balancing Objectives and Measurements
    17. The Purpose of Profit
    18. Morality and Profits
    19. Defining Corporate Performance
    20. A Scorecard for Managers
    21. Beyond the Information Revolution
    22. Internet Technology and Education
    23. The Great Strength of E-Commerce
    24. E-Commerce: The Challenge
    25. From Legal Fiction to Economic Reality
    26. Management of the Multinational
    27. Command or Partner
    28. Information for Strategy
    29. Why Management Science Fails to Perform
    30. Nature of Complex Systems
    31. From Analysis to Perception
  • April
    1. Management as a Human Endeavor
    2. The Responsible Worker
    3. Spirit of Performance
    4. Organizations and Individuals
    5. Picking a Leader
    6. Qualities of a Leader
    7. Base Leadership on Strength
    8. Leadership Is Responsibility
    9. Absence of Integrity
    10. Crisis and Leadership
    11. The Four Competencies of a Leader
    12. Fake Versus True Leaders
    13. Churchill the Leader
    14. Alfred Sloan's Management Style
    15. People Decisions
    16. Attracting and Holding People
    17. Picking People: An Example
    18. Decision Steps for Picking People
    19. Placements That Fail
    20. The Succession Decision
    21. Sloan on People Decisions
    22. A Good Judge of People?
    23. The Crucial Promotions
    24. Social Responsibility
    25. Sloan on Social Responsibility
    26. Corporate Greed and Corruption
    27. What Is Business Ethics?
    28. The Ethics of Social Responsibility
    29. Business Ethics
    30. Psychological Insecurity
  • May
    1. Managing Knowledge Workers
    2. The Network Society
    3. Global Competitiveness
    4. Characteristics of the Next Society
    5. The New Pluralism
    6. Knowledge Does Not Eliminate Skill
    7. A Knowledge Society and Society of Organizations
    8. Price of Success in the Knowledge Society
    9. The Center of the Knowledge Society
    10. Sickness of Government
    11. Managing Foreign Currency Exposure
    12. The Manufacturing Paradox
    13. Protectionism
    14. Splintered Nature of Knowledge Work
    15. Use of PEOs and BPOs
    16. Managing Nontraditional Employees
    17. The Corporation as Confederation
    18. The Corporation as a Syndicate
    19. People as Resources
    20. Making Manual Work Productive
    21. Productivity of Service Work
    22. Raising Service-Worker Productivity
    23. Knowledge-Worker Productivity
    24. Defining the Task in Knowledge Work
    25. Defining Results in Knowledge Work
    26. Defining Quality in Knowledge Work
    27. Management: A Practice
    28. Continuous Learning in Knowledge Work
    29. Raise the Yield of Existing Knowledge
    30. Rank of Knowledge Workers
    31. Post-Economic Theory
  • June
    1. Managing Oneself
    2. A Successful Information Based Organization
    3. The "Score" in InformationBased Organizations
    4. Taking Information Responsibility
    5. Rewards for Information Specialists
    6. Hierarchy Versus Responsibility
    7. Sudden Incompetence
    8. Self Renewal
    9. Individual Development
    10. What to Do in a Value Conflict?
    11. Place Yourself in the Right Organization
    12. Management Education
    13. Attracting Knowledge Workers
    14. Pension-Fund Shareholders
    15. Pension-Fund Regulation
    16. Pension-Fund Capitalism
    17. Test of Pension-Fund Socialism
    18. The Business Audit
    19. Inflation Versus Unemployment
    20. When Regulation Is Required
    21. Work
    22. Goal and Vision for Work
    23. Self-Governing Communities
    24. Civilizing the City
    25. Human Dignity and Status
    26. Enjoying Work
    27. Legitimacy of Management
    28. Economic Progress and Social Ends
    29. The Social Sector
    30. Effective Management of Nonprofits
  • July
    1. Theory of the Business
    2. Reality Test of Business Assumptions
    3. Synergy of Business Assumptions
    4. Communicate and Test Assumptions
    5. The Obsolete Theory
    6. Focus on Excellence
    7. Creating Customer Value
    8. Identifying Core Competencies
    9. Each Organization Must Innovate
    10. Exploiting Success
    11. Organized Improvement
    12. Systematic Innovation
    13. Unexpected Success
    14. Unexpected Failure
    15. Incongruity
    16. Process Need
    17. Industry and Market Structure
    18. Demographics
    19. Changes in Perception
    20. New Knowledge
    21. Innovation in Public-Service Institutions
    22. Service Institutions Need a Defined Mission
    23. Optimal Market Standing
    24. Worship of High Profit Margins
    25. Four Lessons in Marketing
    26. From Selling to Marketing
    27. Cost-Driven Pricing
    28. Cost Control in a Stable Business
    29. Cost Control in a Growth Business
    30. Eliminating Cost Centers
    31. Making Cost-Control Permanent
  • August
    1. Diversification
    2. Being the Wrong Size
    3. Growth
    4. Managing the New Venture
    5. Calculated Obsolescence
    6. Tunnel-Vision Innovation
    7. Social Innovation: The Research Lab
    8. Social Innovation: The Lab Without Walls
    9. Research Laboratory: Obsolete?
    10. The Infant New Venture
    11. The Rapidly Growing New Venture
    12. Managing Cash in the New Venture
    13. Management Team for the New Venture
    14. Unrealized Business Potential
    15. Finding Opportunities in Vulnerabilities
    16. Exploiting Innovative Ideas
    17. First with the Most
    18. Hitting Them Where They Aren't
    19. Entrepreneurial Judo
    20. Changing Economic Characteristics
    21. Ecological Niche: Tollbooth Strategy
    22. Ecological Niche: Specialty Skill Strategy
    23. Ecological Niche: Specialty Market
    24. Threats to Niche Strategies
    25. Able Company: Research Strategy
    26. Baker Company: Research Strategy
    27. Charlie Company: Research Strategy
    28. Success Always Creates New Realities
    29. The Opportunity-Focused Organization
    30. Finding Opportunity in Surprises
    31. Maintaining Dynamic Equilibrium
  • September
    1. Know Thy Time
    2. Record Time and Eliminate Time Wasters
    3. Consolidate Time
    4. Practices of Effective Executives
    5. Focus on Contribution
    6. Performance Appraisals
    7. How to Develop People
    8. Knowledge Worker as Effective Executive
    9. Take Responsibility for Your Career
    10. Defining One's Performance
    11. Results That Make a Difference
    12. Managing Oneself: Identify Strengths
    13. Managing Oneself: How Do I Perform?
    14. Managing Oneself: What to Contribute?
    15. Managing Oneself: Work Relationships
    16. Managing the Boss
    17. Managing Oneself: The Second Half
    18. Managing Oneself: Revolution in Society
    19. A Noncompetitive Life
    20. Staffing Decisions
    21. Widow-Maker" Positions
    22. Overage Executives
    23. Controls, Control, and Management
    24. Controls: Neither Objective nor Neutral
    25. Controls Should Focus on Results
    26. Controls for Nonmeasurable Events
    27. The Ultimate Control of Organizations
    28. Harmonize the Immediate and Longrange Future
    29. Misdirection by Specialization
    30. Compensation Structure
  • October
    1. Pursuing Perfection
    2. Decision Objectives
    3. Decision Making
    4. The Right Compromise
    5. Building Action into the Decision
    6. Organize Dissent
    7. Elements of the Decision Process
    8. Is a Decision Necessary?
    9. Classifying the Problem
    10. Defining the Problem: An Example
    11. Defining the Problem: The Principles
    12. Getting Others to Buy The Decision
    13. Testing the Decision Against Results
    14. Continuous Learning in Decision Making
    15. Placing Decision Responsibility
    16. Legitimate Power in Society
    17. The Conscience of Society
    18. Capitalism Justified
    19. Moving Beyond Capitalism
    20. The Efficiency of the Profit Motive
    21. The Megastate
    22. Purpose of Government
    23. Government Decentralization
    24. Strong Government
    25. Government in the International Sphere
    26. Needed: Strong Labor Unions
    27. Political Integration of Knowledge Workers
    28. The Corporation as a Political Institution
    29. Converting Good Intentions into Results
    30. Fund Development in the Nonprofit
    31. Effective Nonprofit Boards of Directors
  • November
    1. Organizational Agility
    2. Business Intelligence Systems
    3. Gathering and Using Intelligence
    4. The Test of Intelligence Information
    5. The Future Budget
    6. Winning Strategies
    7. The Failed Strategy
    8. Strategic Planning
    9. Long-Range Planning
    10. How to Abandon
    11. Divestment
    12. The Work of the Manager
    13. Management by Objectives and Self-Control
    14. How to Use Objectives
    15. The Management Letter
    16. The Right Organization
    17. Limits of Quantification
    18. Hierarchy and Equality
    19. Characteristics of Organizations
    20. The Federal Principle
    21. Federal Decentralization: Strengths
    22. Federal Decentralization: Requirements
    23. Reservation of Authority
    24. Simulated Decentralization
    25. Building Blocks of Organization
    26. Fundamentals of Communications
    27. Rules for Staff Work
    28. Rules for Staff People
    29. Role of Public Relations
    30. Control Middle Management
  • December
    1. The Work of the Social Ecologist
    2. Turbulent Times Ahead
    3. The New Entrepreneur
    4. Information on Cost and Value
    5. Price-Led Costing
    6. Activity Costing
    7. Obstacles to Economic Chain Costing
    8. EVA as a Productivity Measure
    9. Benchmarking for Competitiveness
    10. Resource-Allocation Decisions
    11. Six Rules of Successful Acquisitions
    12. Business Not Financial Strategy
    13. What the Acquirer Contributes
    14. Common Core of Unity
    15. Respect for the Business and Its Values
    16. Provide New Top Management
    17. Promote Across Lines
    18. Alliances for Progress
    19. Rules for Successful Alliances
    20. The Temptation to Do Good
    21. The Whistle-blower
    22. Limits of Social Responsibility
    23. Spiritual Values
    24. Human Existence in Tension
    25. The Unfashionable Kierkegaard
    26. Return of the Demons
    27. Integrating the Economic and Social
    28. The Family-Managed Business
    29. Rules for the Family Managed Business
    30. Innovations for Maximum Opportunities
    31. From Data to Information Literacy

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