Rating: 
Summary: Text-to-speech disabled
Review: I d/l the file and after awhile the eBooks quit working. Adobe does not provide support for eBooks. Essentially wasted my money. Too bad the book looked pretty good.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't buy eBooks
Review: I d/l the file and after awhile the eBooks quit working. Adobe does not provide support for eBooks. Essentially wasted my money. Too bad the book looked pretty good.
Rating:
Summary: The Father of Modern Management
Review: I know of no person besides Peter Drucker who has such a solid reputation for managerial expertise. Anyone in a management position, regardless of the size of the organization, will be benefited enormously by reading this work. Drucker is profound, yet practical. His writings are incredibly thought-provoking.This volume is a compilation of Drucker's writings that span his sixty years of managerial reflections. It is by no means a complete collection of Drucker. Instead it is rather a concise summary of the principles that have made Drucker the father of modern management that he is. I have read several titles on management, but none come close to the classic nature of what I have found here. Drucker is simply superb. Get it, read it, and see for yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: Drucker is no Jim Collins
Review: I'll say up front that I really wanted to enjoy this book. I had heard a lot about Drucker over the years and was excited to be introduced to his work. However, for the most part, I didn't find the book at all useful. In general, Drucker's work seems to focus a lot on the academic topic of management trends. This isn't the type of book that a high level executive would pass along to his or her peers in order to get down to earth ideas. To be honest, most of the information in the book is just boring. I read this book close to when I read "Good to Great" by Jim Collins and in my opinion Drucker's work doesn't even come close to having the practical applicability of that book. Drucker seems to remind me a lot of economist John Maynard Keynes. Both have made really big names for themselves, but neither is making a difference today in their field that warrants having such a reputation. I think Drucker most certainly benefited from being the first management guru. If the same books he wrote had never been around and then they got released today, I bet almost nobody outside of academia would pay much attention to them. So, in conclusion, my recommendation would be to not read this book unless you're an academic or hard core management book junkie. Otherwise, buy "Good to Great" by Jim Collins or read it again if you aleady have it. Greg Blencoe
Author, The Ten Commandments for Managers
Rating:
Summary: Drucker is no Jim Collins
Review: I'll say up front that I really wanted to enjoy this book. I had heard a lot about Drucker over the years and was excited to be introduced to his work. However, for the most part, I didn't find the book at all useful. In general, Drucker's work seems to focus a lot on the academic topic of management trends. This isn't the type of book that a high level executive would pass along to his or her peers in order to get down to earth ideas. To be honest, most of the information in the book is just boring. I read this book close to when I read "Good to Great" by Jim Collins and in my opinion Drucker's work doesn't even come close to having the practical applicability of that book. Drucker seems to remind me a lot of economist John Maynard Keynes. Both have made really big names for themselves, but neither is making a difference today in their field that warrants having such a reputation. I think Drucker most certainly benefited from being the first management guru. If the same books he wrote had never been around and then they got released today, I bet almost nobody outside of academia would pay much attention to them. So, in conclusion, my recommendation would be to not read this book unless you're an academic or hard core management book junkie. Otherwise, buy "Good to Great" by Jim Collins or read it again if you aleady have it. Greg Blencoe
Author, The Ten Commandments for Managers
Rating:
Summary: Essential reading for Drucker fans!
Review: If you enjoyed Management Challenges for the 21st Century as much as I did, read this book! If you have never read Drucker before, read this book! Drucker's work has influenced my consulting work and writing for years. I invoke his concepts frequently in my recent book, Work Naked: Eight Essential Principles for Peak Performance in the Virtual Workplace, so I am pleased that he has produced another important reference for business leaders. This new book provides an excellent sense of the evolution of his point-of-view and of the very nature of work over several decades. He is one of the few authorities with a broad, deep perspective and that is even more valuable in less than optimal economic conditions. As always, it is refreshing and rewarding to read his clear, insightful ideas -- a true master at work!
Rating:
Summary: The best of his bests.
Review: If you haven't read his previous books, get and read this one. It has the best of the best.
Rating:
Summary: Complete Drucker
Review: If you love Drucker you will love this. This is one book everyone needs to read, and own. You will reflect on his lessons for years to come.
Rating:
Summary: The "Essentials" (Thus Far)
Review: It is worth noting that the selections in this volume were made by Drucker himself from books and articles written during a 60-year career, one which continues in his 93rd year. According to Drucker, this volume has two purposes: "First, it offers, I hope, a coherent and fairly comprehensive Introduction to Management. But second, it gives an Overview of my works on management and thus answers a question that my editors and I have asked again and again. Where do I start to read Drucker? Which of his writings are essential. The material is divided within three parts: Management, The Individual, and Society. In all of what Drucker has published thus far, he either asserts or implies that the profession of management has obligations to society in general (indeed to the global human community) as well as to any one organization. Indeed, he entitles another of his works The Profession of Management. The title of Drucker's first chapter in this volume suggests this: "Management as Social Function and Liberal Art." The title of the final chapter is "From Analysis to Perception -- The New Worldview." As always, Drucker has one eye on the task at hand and the other on the future. All of the material in this volume is first-rate. It remains for each reader to determine which material is of greatest relevance to her or his specific needs and interests. Other reviewers may wish to quibble with Drucker about some of his selections. Be my guest.
Rating: 
Summary: Condensed brilliance, which may leave you wishing for more
Review: Peter Drucker has had a truly unique perspective and influence on the development of modern organizational management practices. He is old enough to have known Alfred Sloan of General Motors, and was a studious observer of the rise of the modern corporation, all the way through to its present most advanced state, the post-industrial knowledge-based corporation. Furthermore, Drucker has made major contributions over the decades to management theory and practice, through his books, teaching, consulting, and many articles in publications such as the Harvard Business Review. He has studied a broad span of management topics, from organizational behavior to individual behavior to the impact of organizations and businesses on society. He is even a bit of a futurist. So, who better to have one's life work collected into a single volume, to provide an overview of 20th century management theory?
"The Essential Drucker" (TED) is definitely worth reading, for anyone with a modicum of interest in organizational management. For someone like myself, with a good number of years in business, it served as an excellent refresher course and validated many of my own beliefs about management, and the teachings that I've received through other channels. Drucker's writings are the antithesis of faddish, flaky management theories; he advocates a very solid, non-flashy, heads-down, customer and results focused approach to management that also manages to be humane. There are so many nuggets of wisdom sprinkled throughout TED that I would not be doing justice to the book to highlight only a few of them. One impression that comes across strongly, reading thoughts that Drucker put to paper decades ago, is just how true and applicable they are today.
Having heaped much praise on Drucker and TED, I'm obligated to point out the book's major flaw, which is a function of the way it was put together. Drucker has produced so much writing on so many topics that it is perhaps an impossible task to condense the highlights into a single volume, and still retain anything close to the full force of his arguments. Reading TED, it appears that what most often was edited out (but not always, to be fair) was the evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) in support of his theories. You still get the theories and the declarative statements, but what is often missing is the supporting evidence and examples of the application of the theories, to provide a proper context. A veteran manager can supply these from one's own personal experience, as I was often able to do, but I feel that inexperienced readers, such as the students who Drucker claims are part of the target audience for TED, might struggle with the book.
Given that Drucker and his editor decided to make a single volume rather than two or three, TED is a worthwhile summary of a lifetime's work from a great management thinker, and a decent overall survey of 20th century management theory and practices.
| 
