A Year with Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness

Our thinking, choices, decisions
are determined by
what we’ve SEEN
and the choice of attention area
at a point in time …

And our brain can only see
what it’s prepared to see

Drucker was also a mentor to many notable leaders in business, government, and nonprofits, a role he valued tremendously.

In A Year with Peter Drucker, you will get to experience his mentorship process firsthand as his longtime collaborator Joseph A. Maciariello (no two people) leads you from week to week, lesson to lesson, using previously unpublished material and selected readings from Drucker’s classic works to highlight critical lessons in leadership, personal effectiveness, and mission-driven strategy.

It features examples from the individuals and organizations that Drucker helped to guide to success, including his work assisting leaders in creating some of the world’s most influential religious organizations.

Joseph A. Maciariello has distilled (no two people) the essence of Drucker’s personal mentorship program into an easy-to-follow 52-week course.

Each week contains a lesson, message, or anecdote taken from Drucker’s extensive body of published and unpublished work, moving from theme to theme throughout the year.

It also includes further readings and reflections on the week’s subject, and deep reflection questions—or quick brainstorming prompts—to help readers incorporate the message into their day-to-day work.

The year will cover the themes Drucker (no two people) felt were most important to leadership development, such as

Maciariello, who worked alongside Drucker as a collaborator on a number of his books, delivers the ultimate Drucker companion—and the next best thing to being mentored by the legend himself.

Introduction

Peter Drucker mentored executives and other knowledge workers for over a haIf century through his consulting, teaching, and publications.

As a longtime student and colleague of his, I have had the opportunity to observe his mentoring directly and I have benefited from his counsel.

It began in 1981, when I attended a PhD seminar he taught in Claremont.

I also had the opportunity to learn from him during the twenty-six years I spent as his colleague at what is now the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management of Claremont Graduate University.

When Drucker reduced his teaching, I had the opportunity to teach the course "Drucker on Management" to executives and MBA students in Claremont and around the world for approximately ten years.

I then coordinated a team-taught course, "The Drucker Difference," involving the entire Drucker faculty.

Finally, I had the extraordinary opportunity to work directly with him during the last six years of his life.

Then in 2008, Bob Buford asked me to assemble, analyze, edit, and study the transcripts and listen to the recordings of Drucker's mentoring of him and a number of other leaders associated with his Leadership Network and the Halftime Institute.

In addition, I later conducted and transcribed interviews related to what I have called the Drucker-Buford Dialogue Project, which took place from 1984 to 2005.

I have devoted much of my time during the past six years to developing the ideas contained in this mentoring book, an opportunity given to me by Bob Buford.

The purpose of this book is to share Drucker's management techniques with fans the world over.

Through a year of readings, lessons, and questions, you will get a chance to experience Drucker's mentorship.

The objective is to share Drucker's mentorship program with you just as he shared it with Buford and with a number of others.

Drucker's work has had a tremendous impact on the management of large-scale organizations, a product of the twentieth century.

Drucker codified the practice of management in 1946 and 1954, largely on the basis of his consulting experience and his knowledge of the social sciences and humanities, including history, political science, psychology, and economics.

Drucker had a number of very unusual qualities.

First, he believed that the discipline of management should be organized by looking at good practice.

He believed that practice organizes reality and therefore good practice should organize the discipline of management.

Second, he was an astute observer of reality, always learning from the people and organizations with whom he associated.

Third, he was able to integrate his vast knowledge and bring it to bear on specific problems faced by executives in their organizations.

Fourth, as a person trained in international law and political science, he looked at organizations from the outside in.

This viewpoint led him to become interested in all of society's organizations — not just for-profit institutions, but also social sector and public sector organizations.

He felt that to tolerate substandard performance in any one sector dissipates wealth and is detrimental to society's overall welfare.

His driving force was to provide for the needs of citizens of free societies so they would never be tempted to turn to authoritarian substitutes, which history, and his own early life experiences, had shown to be disastrous.

THE ALTERNATIVE TO TYRANNY

His domain included private, nonprofit, and governmental organizations and his writings and mentoring were filled with examples from all walks of life.

He did see differences among organizations in these three sectors but he saw many more similarities.

As you read this book and work through the exercises, you will see the value that Drucker saw in taking such a broad perspective.

There are fifty-two entries in the book, one for each week of the year.

They are subdivided into thirteen major topics.

Each topic has important contributions to make in helping you become an effective leader.

Some entries use unexpected examples and applications from organizations that may surprise you, but they are all important to Drucker's worldview, and to his principles of management.

Each entry begins with an introduction and examples introducing the week's lessons and context.

The introduction is then followed by a three-part sequence: readings, reflections, and exercises.

There is a new reading from Drucker on the topic in each entry, generally in part I.

In part Il there are several readings from Drucker along with my reflections, which set the context for the readings.

Finally, part III consists of "practicum-prompts" that help you to apply what you have learned to your own life and work.

Some of the questions are too broad to be handled in the space that follows them; some others are simply reflections entailing no need to write.

My advice is to concentrate first on those entries that have immediate application to your life and duties.

Work these through and try to implement them.

Think through what you expect to happen as a result of your actions and then compare actual results with your expectations.

This process is called feedback analysis.

It should help you to determine what you did right and what still needs improvement.

Some of the entries may also apply to other people in, and other units of, your organization.

You might suggest that relevant people take a look at and work out these entries.

In this way you will make a contribution to the organization as a whole and to other organizations whose mission and welfare you care about.

Throughout the book, you will be introduced to Drucker's principles of management.

These principles are also summarized in "Lessons Learned" and itemized in the Appendix.

Effective leadership is a practice, and like every other practice it is mastered through an iterative process of learning and doing and learning more.

"Lessons Learned" and the Appendix will help you in this iterative process.

My hope is that this book will become an indispensable guide.

That it will lead you deeply into Drucker's knowledge and wisdom, and allow you, as a leader and a person, to convert this wisdom into effective action.

Good luck!

“For almost nothing in our educational systems
prepares people
for the reality
in which they will
live, work, and become effective” — Druckerism

A Year with Peter Drucker 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness

A Year with Peter Drucker

52 Weeks of Coaching
for Leadership Effectiveness