I'll share
a personality flaw with you; I'm not much of a follower, which is likely why
I'm an entrepreneur.
Yet, some
people cast a light so bright that you can't help but follow the path they
illuminate into the future. Peter Drucker was one of those people.
In the
many years I knew Peter Drucker and in my many conversations with him, I came
away with these points as the ones to effectively use while building an
extraordinary Organization and also while living an extraordinary life
1. Don't just manage, lead.
Drucker had a problem with
the concept of managing knowledge workers.
He felt that leadership
was increasingly becoming a shared responsibility.
He believed in pushing
down decision-making to those closest to the process.
To lead, in Drucker's
mind, was to empower people by providing the resources for success rather than
a roadmap with turn-by-turn directions
If that frightens you, he said, then you have
the wrong people leading your organization.
2. The way to keep good people is to give them a chance at the
moon.
During the 20 years I was
building my company, we didn't lose a single one of the eight people on
our senior leadership team.
The same was true of
nearly all of our top performers.
We compensated people
fairly, but that's not why they stayed.
Drucker taught me that
what drives the best people is a challenge that allows them to reach beyond
themselves to be part of something greater.
It's what Peter Diamandis
calls a "moon shot," a goal so large it creates a gravity to draw
people to it and keep them in its orbit.
Besides, challenge only
scares off the people that you need to scare off.
3. Before figuring out how it should be done, ask why it's being done.
Drucker had an issue with
using Industrial Era metrics for the Knowledge Age.
He felt that all too often
we streamline tasks without first asking why the task is being done to begin
with.
One of the simplest yet
most profound lessons I learned from Drucker was to always question the task's
reason for existence before fixing it; does it add value, and if so, how?
Drucker was a master at
asking questions.
In the ten years I knew
him I'm not sure he ever actually answered a single question of mine directly.
Instead he would almost
always rephrase or reframe my questions. Challenging conventional wisdom was
his forte -- he often called himself and "insultant," who
scolded people for a fee. It taught me to never be afraid or ashamed to
say, "I don't know," and to ask "why?" until I did.
4. If you are bored it's your fault.
Drucker didn't tolerate
laziness.
He was constantly in
motion.
I once asked him if he felt he shouldn't slow
down at some point -- this was when he was about 90.
His response was that hard
work was bad only for those people who didn't have purpose or passion.
If you have a reason to
work hard and/or a passion for what you do then there will never be enough
hours in the day.
But Drucker also balanced
work with great passions in other areas of his life: his teaching, his
love of Japanese art, and his willingness to mentor and pay it forward.
5. Treat your employees as though they were volunteers.
This is one of those
perspectives that is completely unintuitive when you first hear it.
Drucker spent the last
part of his career working a great deal with nonprofits and volunteer
organizations.
He wanted to bring business
acumen to nonprofits but he also believed that for-profit organizations could
learn a lot from how non-profits attracted volunteers.
"Volunteers," he
would say, "leave at the end of the day and only come back if they want
to."
When you think about the
work ethos among Millenials and Gen Z, who need a deep sense of social purpose
in their work, it's obvious that Drucker was ahead of his time.
6. Abandon the past. (No, really, I mean bury it!)
How do you manage the
accelerating pace of change?
You do it by
"organized abandonment" -- consciously killing off yesterday.
Drucker chose his words
carefully.
One of my favorite quotes
of his is that "the hardest thing to do is to keep a corpse from
rotting."
Yeah, not a pleasant
thought, but how often do companies hold onto the past with their best and
brightest while the future passes them by?
Not a bad lesson in
business and in life.
7. Be humble.
This last one is how I'll
best remember Peter Drucker.
If anyone had a reason to
be boastful and arrogant, it was Drucker.
He had been on the front
lines of more change than a hundred men and women could see in
a lifetime.
Yet he was anything
but arrogant.
Drucker had no reason to
mentor me and offer his time, but he did.
The last letter I received
from him was in response to a very grateful thank-you note from me for his
mentorship and his decade of professional and personal guidance.
He responded to my praise
by saying, "Tom, even if I apply a discount of 90% to what you have said,
it is still far too kind."
That was Drucker;
brilliant, gracious, and humble.
We would all do well to
follow his lead.
Response Magic 
