The Practical Drucker

Summary

Business gurus come and go. But not Peter Drucker, who remains a towering figure, widely regarded to be the father of modern management and the world’s most influential business thinker.

Drucker’s uncanny ability to codify management practices and predict future trends has ensured his lasting impact. His dozens of books include the landmark Concept of the Corporation and The Effective Executive, which remains a bestseller decades after its first appearance.

Drucker aimed high to illuminate the big picture of organizations, their people, and the global forces affecting them. As such, his focus on the “what to do” eclipsed the “how to do it” that managers and executives crave. Yet crystalline insights into “how” were always there.

Scattered throughout his massive oeuvre are solutions to recurring problems and answers to perplexing questions. The Practical Drucker culls 40 of the most important how-to lessons, each interpreted for today’s business challenges and illustrated with fascinating stories and examples. Discover what Drucker had to say about how to:

• Engage your workforce in four essential steps

• Use the 80/20 rule to improve performance and cut costs

• Stay ahead of the competition by actively anticipating change

• Build synergy between marketing and selling

• Find the just-right price for your product or service

• Conduct useful marketing research, and toss out irrelevant data

• Embrace profitability, while avoiding the dangers of profit maximization

• Make a business case for acting in socially responsible ways

• Make the single most important leadership decision

• And much more

As a student, scholar, and longtime friend of Peter Drucker, author William A. Cohen is uniquely positioned to illuminate these timeless teachings of the management master, which resonate today with as much force and relevance as when they were first articulated.