Author: guest

Think more deeply, act more persuasively
by Professor Vlatka Hlupic

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Just over two years ago Rick Wartzman noted in a Drucker Society Europe blog the numerous initiatives in recent years based around the evidence showing that a humane and thoughtful approach to leadership and management is actually better for corporate performance than more exploitative or short-termist approaches. Appreciative Inquiry, Conscious Capitalism and Shared Value, among others, all received a mention.   Though he approved of all these developments, he struck a cautionary note:   “Does this flurry of activity add up to more than a bunch of scattered conferences and white papers? Are we actually witnessing the beginnings of a social movement?”   This raises a challenge for those of us who write about the […]

The Great Transformation of the Organization Needs the How
by Dan Pontefract

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This blog was originaly published on the HuffPost blog.   Billed as “The Great Transformation”, its work was cut out for itself from the moment you could register online. A conference paying homage to the brilliance of Peter Drucker has now become an annual calendar fixture not to be missed. The 6th iteration of the Global Peter Drucker Forum — recently held in Vienna, naturally — has arguably become the TED or Davos of all leadership conferences. But could we shift into an era of “managing our way to prosperity,” as the conference sub-title suggested?   Could we achieve “The Great Transformation”?   Richard Straub, the Forum’s chief architect, asked a rhetorical question in his […]

Post-Rational Management? Reflections on the Global Drucker Forum 2014
by David Hurst

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The 6th Global Drucker Forum ended on November 14 with a series of comments and calls to action from the major speakers involved. The last of these was HBS professor Clay Christensen, who called for more cooperation and harmonizing of language among management experts. He illustrated the kind of cooperation he was talking about with a story about Florida governor Jeb Bush and how he had shared slides from a presentation on the topic of child-centred education and the reform of the American education system. Forbes columnist Steve Denning quoted Christensen’s story in full and suggested that this is the way the management field should be headed. I didn’t agree and responded to his column. […]

Human Essence as a Key to Prosperity. Part I of II.
by Ellina Watanabe

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It has been 60 years since Peter Drucker pointed out to the management world an importance of inner human world and its impact on prosperous organization functioning. Today, managers are finally embracing his words and are starting to “lead not only through knowledge, competence and skill but through vision, courage, responsibility, and integrity.” However, in order to fully reap the benefits of this ethos, it is important to approach it holistically, as Peter Drucker would and did.   Human essence, as I shall refer to the question of what makes us who we are, is often and conveniently diminished to human character, aptitudes, and virtues. Largely speaking, to intellect, knowledge, and reason. If managers adopt […]

Affordable Government- A Theory Or Just One Click Away?
by Jørn B. Andersen

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Author Jørn B. Andersen, European Director, Clareo and Advisory Board Member Kellogg Innovation Network   The theory of the firm was one of Peter Drucker’s great insights about how to analyse and understand why once great companies and organisations decline or develop themselves into oblivion. The central challenge for all organisations including government is ’What to do’. The root cause of every organization’s crisis is not necessarily that things are done poorly. The problem is that things done become fruitless. The reason for this is that the assumptions upon which the organisation has been built and run things no longer fit reality. Drucker’s point seems very relevant in regard to the present day’s role of […]

THE PARADOX OF OUR FAITH IN HUMANISM
by Andrew Keen

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“Every few hundred years throughout Western history, a sharp transformation has occurred”, Peter Drucker wrote (http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/10/what-peter-drucker-knew-about-2020/) in 1992. Today’s great transformation is being driven by digital technology. We are on the verge of a new epoch of smart computers that MIT’s Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolffsen describe as the “Second Machine Age”. Drucker himself imagined this revolution as “the shift to a knowledge society.” But it’s actually an information technology revolution – the artificially intelligent new world of the Internet of Things, self-driving cars and IBM’s Watson.   So how does this digital revolution change our lives? What does it mean for us as managers, workers and, above all, as human beings?   Many believe […]

How do you extract big knowledge from big data?
by Dr. Jay Liebowitz, Orkand Endowed Chair in Management and Technology, University of Maryland University College

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Most everyone now has heard one of the hottest terms today—big data. Big data is a big deal, especially in such data-intensive industries as cybersecurity, finance, healthcare, marketing, transportation, energy, and others. And, many of us are already familiar with the 3V’s of big data-volume, velocity, and variety of data. But, the key question is, “How do we extract big knowledge from big data?”   The answer to this question is partly through analytics, which is also a growing field within various sectors. Some people look at data analytics, in terms of educating future “data scientists,” and still others are exploring business analytics through educating a new kind of “business analyst.” The new breed of […]

The embarrassment of complexity
by Helga Nowotny

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This is the full text of the opening keynote by Prof. Helga Nowotny at the 5th Global Peter Drucker Forum.   1.   The embarrassment of complexity begins when we realize that old structures are no longer adequate and the new ones are not yet in place. Currently we are in a transition phase. The old never yields to the new in one precise moment in time and this is what makes transition phases exciting, risky – and sometimes embarrassing.   The sheer multiplication of networks of various kinds and the unprecedented density of interactions generated thereby has opened access to information and information sharing to a multitude of new users.   So has the […]