Lessons From Reading Peter Drucker

I recently read Peter Drucker’s book The Essential Drucker to learn more about the foundations of management before I begin my career.

The book is broken down into the 3 distinct ideas of managing business, managers and subordinates.

Drucker makes the claim that effectiveness and intelligence have little correlation. Effectiveness is driven by the habits created in life and contributing to goals daily. In my life, I have seen that with effective habits comes long term growth that has led to my achievement in both my professional and personal life. Drucker imposes we should be asking the question of what we can contribute to a situation.

Drucker goes through talking about value extensively. Value surrounds price, quality and profits and how these categories can be leveraged. Quality refers to the amount of time and use with a product or service. A quality product will drive up the price and in return the profits for that given service. With this applied to management, the quality of leadership will in turn drive employee innovation and effectiveness to create an overall quality organization.

The book discusses how managers should be seen to set objectives, organize, communicate with employees, determine performance indicators and develop individuals around. These 5 traits are what I have seen in managers from my previous internships. These traits led to me having a lot of respect for my past managers and they in return made me a better person.

Innovation is a key concept of the book. Without innovation reality stays the same. There is no progression of life. Innovation comes from truly learning a subject and applying the knowledge of the concept to ideas and research to create technology. I like the fact that this book reinforces holstering healthy conversations about innovation and the strategic advantage it will give. ?

What Drucker learned in his life is there is no perfect organizational structure and it is best to tailor each organization to specific needs rather than a predetermined order. The main goals of an organization structure should be to increase productivity and organize resources effectively.

There were several concepts about entrepreneurship mentioned throughout the book. Several strategies including Judo strategy; implementing new technology, Toll-gate strategy; finding a niche market, Specialty Skill strategy; survey and ask questions to figure out what consumers need. These 3 strategies can be applied to everyday business as they have the underlying concepts of management, growth and consumerism.