MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
PETER F. DRUCKER
HARPERBUSINESS 1999
Back cover
“This is not a book of PREDICTIONS, not a book about the FUTURE. The challenges and issues discussed in it are already with us in every one of the developed countries and in most of the emerging ones (e.g., Korea or Turkey). They can already be identified, discussed, analyzed and prescribed for. Some people, someplace are already working on them. But so far very few organizations do, and very few executives. Those who do work on these challenges today, and thus prepare themselves and their institutions for the new challenges, will be the leaders and dominate tomorrow. Those who wait until these challenges have indeed become ‘hot’ issues are likely to fall behind, perhaps never to recover.
This book is thus a Call for Action”
From the Introduction
Front cover
New and revolutionary ideas and perspectives on the central management issues of tomorrow by “the most important management thinker of our time” (Warren Bennis).
In his first major new book since Post-Capitalist Society Peter F. Drucker discusses the new paradigms of management – how they have changed and will continue to change our basic assumptions about the practices and principles of management. Drucker analyzes the new realities of strategy, shows how to be a leader in periods of change, and explains “the New Information Revolution,” discussing the information an executive needsand the information an executive owes. He also examines knowledge worker productivity, and shows that changes in the basic attitude of individuals and organizations as well as structural changes in work itself are needed for increased productivity. Finally Drucker addresses the ultimate challenge of managing yourself while still meeting the demands on the individual during a longer working life and in an ever-changing workplace.
Incisive, challenging, and mind-stretching, Drucker’s new book is forward-looking and forward-thinking. It combines the broad knowledge, wide practical experience, profound insight, sharp analysis, and enlightened common sense that are the essence of Drucker’s writings, which are continuing international bestsellers and “landmarks of the managerial profession” (Harvard Business Review).
About the author
Peter F. Drucker was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educated there and in England. He earned his doctorate in public and international law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frankfurt, Germany, and afterward worked as an economist for an international bank in London. In 1937 he came to the United States and two years later published his first book, The End of Economic Man. Drucker’s management books and analyses of economics and society are widely read and respected throughout the world, with editions in more than 20 languages. He has also written a lively autobiography, two novels, and several volumes of essays. A frequent contributor to various magazines and journals over the years, Drucker is also an editorial columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
Drucker has had a distinguished career as a teacher, first as a professor of politics and philosophy at Bennington College, then for more than 20 years as a professor of management at the Graduate School of New York University. Since 1971he has been the Clark Professor of Social Sciences at Claremont Graduate School in California.
Drucker has four children and six grandchildren and lives with his wife in Claremont, California.
Introduction: Tomorrow’s “Hot” Issues
Where, readers may ask, is the discussion of COMPETITIVE STRATEGY, of LEADERSHIP, of CREATVITY, of TEAMWORK, of TECHNOLOGY in a book on MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES? Where are the “HOT” ISSUES OF TODAY? But this is the very reason why they are not in this book. It deals exclusively with TOMORROW’S “Hot” Issues – the crucial, central, life-and-death issues that are certain to be the major challenges of tomorrow.
CERTAIN? Yes. For this is not a book of PREDICTIONS, not a book about the FUTURE. The challenges and issues discussed in it are already with us in every one of the developed countries and in most of the emerging ones (e.g., Korea or Turkey). They can already be identified, discussed, analyzed and prescribed for. Some people, someplace are already working on them. But so far very few organizations do, and very few executives. Those who do work on these challenges today, and thus prepare themselves and their institutions for the new challenges, will be the leaders and dominate tomorrow. Those who wait until these challenges have indeed become “hot” issues are likely to fall behind, perhaps never to recover.
This book is thus a Call for Action
These challenges are not arising out of today. THEY ARE DIFFERENT. In most cases they are at odds and incompatible with what is accepted and successful today. We live in a period of PROFOUND TRANSITION – and the changes are more radical perhaps than even those that ushered in the “Second Industrial Revolution” of the middle of the 19th century, or the structural changes triggered by the Great Depression and the Second World War. READING this book will upset and disturb a good many people, as WRITING it disturbed me. For in many cases – for example, in the challenges inherent in the DISAPPEARING BIRTHRATE in the developed countries, or in the challenges to the individual, and to the employing organization, discussed in the final chapter on MANAGING ONESELF – the new realities and their demands require a REVERSAL of policies that have worked well for the last century and, even more, a change in the MINDSET of organizations as well as of individuals.
This is a MANAGEMENT BOOK. It intentionally leaves out BUSINESS CHALLENGES – even very important ones such as the question of whether the Euro will displace the U.S. dollar as the world’s key currency, or what will SUCCEED the 19th century’s most successful economic inventions, the commercial bank and the investment bank. It intentionally does not concern itself with ECONOMICS – even though the basic MANAGEMENT changes (e.g., the emergence of knowledge as the economy’s key resource) will certainly necessitate radically new economic theory and equally radically new economic policy. This book does not concern itself with politics – not even with such crucial questions as whether Russia can and will recover as a political, military and economic power. It sticks with MANAGEMENT ISSUES.
There are good reasons for this. The issues this book discusses, the new social, demographic and economic REALITIES, are not issues that GOVERNMENT can successfully deal with. They are issues that will have profound impact on politics; but they are not political issues. They are not issues the Free Market can deal with. They are also not issues of ECONOMIC THEORY or even of ECONOMIC POLICY. They are issues that only MANAGEMENT and the INDIVIDUAL knowledge worker, professional or executive can tackle and resolve. They are surely going to be debated in the domestic politics of every developed and every emerging country. But their resolution will have to take place within the individual organization and will have to be worked out by the individual organization’s MANAGEMENT – and by every single individual knowledge worker (and especially by every single executive) within the organization.
A great many of these organizations will, of course, be businesses. And a great 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 organizations of today’s society. In fact, some of them will affect nonbusinesses even more, if only because a good many nonbusiness organizations – the university, for instance, or the hospital, let alone the government agency – are more rigid and less flexible than businesses are, and far more deeply rooted in the concepts, the assumptions, the policies of yesterday or even, as are universities, in the assumptions of the day before yesterday (i.e., of the 19th century).
How to use this book? I suggest you read a chapter at a time – they are long chapters. And then first ask: “What do these issues, these challenges MEAN for our organization and for me as a knowledge worker, a professional, an executive?” once you have thought this through, ask: “What ACTION should our organization and I, the individual knowledge worker and/or executive, take to make the challenges of this chapter into OPPORTUNITIES for our organization and me?”
AND THEN GO TO WORK!
Peter F. Drucker
Claremont, California
New Year’s Day 1999
Chapter 1: Management’s New Paradigms
Chapter 2: Strategy – The New Certainties
Chapter 3: The Change Leader
Chapter 4: Information Challenges
Chapter 5: Knowledge-Worker Productivity
Chapter 6: Managing Oneself
Acknowledgements
Index