A Peter Drucker reader
Peter Drucker died this week, age 95. He was famous for his business and management theories, but he was also an excellent writer. As the Financial Times said,

From his early writing days – as a journalist in the 1930s – to the very last years of his life, with several professorships and three dozen respected books behind him, Drucker believed that the best ideas have to be simplified in order to be effective.

Not that he dealt with simple ideas. For instance, his emphasis on the importance of clear objectives and the need to balance long-term strategy and innovation against short-term performance, are concepts that reverberate in our daily lives (and one of Oprah’s ongoing self-help themes), the military, the corporate world, and the political and economic well-being of nations.

Drucker was a most versatile writer, and his writing is interesting and engaging. As The Economist asked in its book review of World According to Peter Drucker, by Jack Beatty ,

What other management writer could have written a novel that became a bestseller in Brazil? Or helped popularise Japanese art abroad? Or had the wit to compare sociology to acne? (“Civilisation does not die of the disease, but it itches.”)

His two most famous books are the classic Management textbook, and The Practice of Management.

However, I recommend that you start by reading his wonderful autobiography, Adventures of a Bystander, along with The Essential Drucker: Management, the Individual and Society.

I just ordered The Daily Drucker : 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done to give as a Christmas present. The entry for January 1, Integrity In Leadership states,

For it is character through which leadership is excercised; it is character that sets the example and is imitated.

Words to live by, in all aspects of our lives.

Here’s where you can order: