Making Management Great Again by Janka Krings-Klebe and Jörg Schreiner

Following the business news in the weeks after this year’s Drucker Forum, it became clear that management, as taught at business schools, is headed for irrelevance. Today it no longer solves problems. It creates them. So-called “best practices” of management have caused a multitude of problems that only became apparent after a delay of decades, but are now making themselves felt with force[…]

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Leadership – more than good management? by Kathy Brewis

What is leadership, what are leaders for, and are leaders and managers really the same thing? This was the starting point of a lively discussion moderated by HBR’s Ania Wieckowski. She opened by noting that in any forum the debate around leadership vs management quickly becomes heated. These days, she said, leadership activities tend to be more highly regarded than management functions – perhaps because “having a vision” sounds more impressive than supervising.[…]

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Peter Drucker in 2020: the challenge and privilege of transformation by Esther Clark

Peter Drucker predicted that by 2020 a new world – completely different from our grandparents’ reality – would exist. Drucker, father of modern management, explained in a 1992 essay for Harvard Business Review, that “every few hundred years throughout Western history, a sharp transformation has occurred. In a matter of decades, society altogether rearranges itself – its worldview, its basic values, its social and political structures, its arts, its key institutions.”[…]

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Reimaging what it means to lead by Walter McFarland

The character of organizations has changed so much in recent years, that we have invented new words and phrases to describe life in 21st century organizations. Examples include: chaotic, disruptive, and VUCA—an acronym for volatile, chaotic, uncertain and ambiguous. Global competition, digital revolution, political uncertainty and other factors are now joined by the global pandemic.[…]

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Leading oneself: finding the way to highest impact by Nick Hixson

Leaders do damage to their organizations if they don’t do development of themselves. Their own capabilities to lead effectively are never perfect, and any investment they make in honing their skills has immediate payoff. How should leaders approach this responsibility in a disciplined way? How can they know if they’re improving?[…]

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