Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker
Father of Modern Management
1909-2005

The Weasels’ jobs just got easier. Here are some of the most important things I’ve learned from Peter Drucker:

1. He coined the term “Knowledge Worker”, which helped explain how the workplace had become more dependent on what people knew than what they did
2. He thumped on companies big and small with a trademark question: “What business are you in?” and went to explain what business they were really in - they were in the business of developing people. Think about what organizations that know that have done… now think about where you work and how you develop the people in your charge
3. The modern job evaluation process- for good or evil- is largely founded on his belief that you can’t measure results if you didn’t have concrete goals to start with. Every time you ask one of your employees to set SMART goals or define outcomes, you’re marching to a tune Drucker popularized, even if he didn’t write it by himself
4. That didn’t mean you tolerated underperformance for long. He’s also the guy who said, “Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.”
5. Most importantly, Drucker helped change thinking about the role of manager- from militaristic “command and control” to an inclusive, strategic model that most of us are still aspiring to.
6. Peter Drucker didn’t want the weasels to get you down either. He’d just say it in a more professional way, with hard science behind him and with that Austrian accent