Management Challenges for the 21st Century

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Summary: A New Information Age
Review: Drucker, a great management master, attracts the attention to the effective use of the information. This is an important point to understand why some people and firms dont be succesful. Because crude informarion is not important, information gains meaning when firms and people impute to it.

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Summary: EXCELLENT BOOK ON THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY
Review: First published in Forbes magazine, California Management Review and Harvard Business Review, the six chapters in this book contain nothing that is an excerpt from Peter Drucker's earlier management books. Indeed, this book supplements Drucker's many earlier management books by looking ahead to the future of management thinking and practice.

At 90, Peter Drucker is, by all accounts, the most enduring management thinker of our time. Born in Vienna, educated in Austria and England, he has worked since 1937 in the United States, first as an economist for a group of British banks and insurance companies, and later as a management consultant to several leading companies. Drucker has since had a distinguished career as a teacher, including more than twenty years as Professor of Management at the Graduate Business School of New York University. Since 1971 he has been Marie Rankin Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management, Claremont Graduate University in California, where he still teaches in the fields of management and business policy.

With a long-term business perspective second to none, Drucker's books span sixty years of modern history beginning with The End of Economic Man (1939) and Managing in a Time of Great Change; Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices; Innovation and Entrepreneurship; The Effective Executive; Managing for Results and The Practice of Management.

This book looks afresh at the future of management thinking and practice and defines new ways of delivering success. It deals exclusively with tomorrow's hot management issues-the crucial, central, life-and-death issues that are certain to be the major challenges of tomorrow. The biggest challenge will be knowledge worker productivity-what is it; how can it work; how do we manage knowledge workers and ourselves? Two fundamental issues addressed are changes in the world economy and the subsequent changes in management practice which will bring about new realities requiring new corporate policies as well as presenting new opportunities for the individual knowledge worker.

Many of the individual knowledge workers affected by these challenges will be employees of business or working with business. Yet this is a management book rather than a business management book. The challenges it presents affect all organisations of today's society, particularly the more rigid and less flexible, i.e. the ones more rooted in the concepts, assumptions and policies of the 19th century. The challenges and issues discussed in this book are not new and are already with us in every one of the developed countries and in most of the emerging ones. They can already be identified, discussed, analyzed and prescribed for. Some people, someplace, are already working on them. But so far very few executives and even less organisations are. Those who do work on these challenges today, and thus prepare themselves and their organisations for the new challenges, will be the leaders and will dominate tomorrow.

Reviewed by Azlan Adnan. Azlan is Managing Partner of Azlan & Koh Knowledge and Professional Management Group, a management consulting practice based in Kota Kinabalu. He holds a Master's degree in International Business and Management from the University of Westminster in London.

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Summary: Why this Century Will Be Known as the Drucker Century
Review: Happy 90th Birthday, Peter! In this impressive volume, Peter Drucker takes another useful step forward in outlining what must be done to finish birthing the Knowledge Age. As the 21st century grows to be dominated by knowledge work and knowledge workers, this volume will be one of the touchstones that will show the way for each of us to live better, more productive lives. I wish someone would establish a Drucker prize for the greatest contribution each year to the advances of the Knowledge Age. Drucker's name will always be associated with this development in the same way that we think of Gutenberg and Luther with regard to the introduction of the printed word.

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Summary: Marvelous.
Review: I didn't expect Drucker to cover individual management and the
problem that knowledge workers might face during his life.
The information change chapter also outlines what influence it
might put on the individual and the organization.

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Summary: A thinker and writer at the top of his form
Review: I have long admired Peter Drucker's work and thoughts. His latest book is his best yet. I read his recent Havard Business Review article on Managing Oneself, was highly impressed and couldn't wait to see the rest of the book. I was not disappointed in any way. Drucker writes with such clarity and wisdom.

Here's an example of where it clarified something for me. I have been wondering about knowledge management for a while, couldn't quite get my head around what it was all about. Some sort of super library thing? I work with advanced technologies and have never reached much clarity about knowledge management, except that it is some sort of wonderful tool and supposedly the solution to a number of ills. And that's the rub. It's a better tool, following an industrial engineering concept - give them better tools and they'll do a better job. Efficiency. Certainly having tools helps, but in a minor way. Drucker has latched onto something much more profound with his perspective of knowledge workers and what they really need to become more productive. It's not knowledge management tools, its a fundamental change in attitude towards the workers themselves, and the work they do. Throwing a knowledge management tool at some knowledge workers is highly unlikely to make them more productive unless its done in a larger context. The answer lies in Drucker's latest work, though you will have to think to get it. Drucker doesn't give cookbook answers.

The book is filled throughout with many such gems.

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Summary: I love the view of Mr. Drucker
Review: I have read almost all of Peter F. Drucker's books and articles.From this, I know what management is and what we should do at 21st century.Thank you! Mr. Drucker.:)

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Summary: Mostly dead right in recommendations but how to apply them?
Review: I loved the first chapter of this book -explaining every organisational thing that's gone wrong with both marketing and performance measurement the last few decades, and with stockmarkets increasing lydiscounting perfectly organised companies , the increasing gap between image and reality is getting urgent if we don't want the business at the "speed of thought" bubble to burst into a huge depression. Indeed Drucker admonishes us that as the 20th century management science began with time and motion methods applied to manual workers we now desperately need a "Promise and e-motion" toolbag for knowledge-worker organisation. But then this first chapter appeared in Forbes last year.

Some of the other chapters , I found less good or indeed rehashes of other Drucker books. BUT overwhelmingly when I finish a Drucker book I feel a slight depression. A lot of wisdom, but how will I apply it - and get others to participate in applying it. Would love to discuss with anyone who reads this book and then feels more confident that I on how to action the whole Chris Macrae e-mail [e-mail] plus some reader dialogue to date [online].

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Summary: Great at times.......boring at others.....
Review: I read a lot of business books and I have to say that Drucker really gets the "big picture" better than 99.999% of the people out there. If you want some other good books related to this book try Free Agent Nation by Daniel Pink and As the Future Catches You by Juan Enriquez (two chapters succinctly FULLY explain the value of the knowledge worker in the 21st Century. The rest of the book is extra info. on genomics but it is VERY EASY to read). The nice part about Drucker's book is that he gives tips and suggestions, along with things to look for in the next generation of managing workers. At times his language can be a bit more boring than the previous two titles I mention but the book is definitely worth reading.

Drucker wastes no time in this book by stating what he believes is the most powerful social force working today and some of the consequences that arise from it.

He believes the aging of the population in the developed countries will have profound impacts on future wealth creation and societal structures. This is a result of a lowering of the birthrate in these countries. When you then add the fact that an additional 2 billion people are projected to live on this planet in the next 20 years you begin to really think about the profound potential impact to the planet and business.

Drucker states that "the most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the 'manual worker' in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of 'knowledge work' and the 'knowledge worker.' The most valuable assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether business or nonbusiness, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity."

That comment alone illustrates that Drucker fully understands the implications that arise from countries evolving their economies from agricultural to industrial to service and technology based knowledge economies. I gave it 4 stars because at times it is pretty tedious reading but definitely a very good book.

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Summary: Not his most relevant work for electronic marketers
Review: I read Peter Drucker for what he says that is relevant to electronic marketing strategy. His earlier collections, like "Managing in a Time of Great Change," have been foresightful and though-provoking. His latest book mostly revisits previous themes, and otherwise spends too much time on things like the birth rate. If you haven't read Drucker, then this book, like all his work, is well worth it. But if you follow his work, this book won't "change the world" for you.

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Summary: Class act
Review: I've recently purchased some management books at Amazon, and this one is one of the best. Mr. Drucker has precise and plain spoken knowledge he imparts to us about the challenges that management face (motivation, competition, e.g.). His years of experience are easily shared in this book.

Other superb books I recommend that I have recently read are Ponder's "The Leader's Guide: 15 Essential Skills," and any Ken Blanchard or Warren Bennis book.