Rick Wartzman: All Publications, Events and Press

Dusting Off a Managing Tome

Ron Tang — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:28:00 -0400

Of all of Peter Drucker's achievements -- advising captains of industry and heads of state, coining the term "knowledge worker," winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom -- the most remarkable may be this: In 1974, his 800-plus-page tome, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, vaulted past The Joy of Sex on the national best seller list.

Last week, HarperCollins released a revised edition of Management. And regardless of whether it winds up eclipsing Bonk, the latest hot-selling volume on the physiology and psychology of sex, I can tell you this: It deserves a spot on every manager's shelf, much as the Physicians' Desk… more

Drucker And the Complexities Of Race

Ron Tang — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:22:00 -0400

Long before so much of the nation became fixated on what was being preached inside black churches on Sunday mornings, Peter Drucker would go on occasion and listen for himself.

It was the late 1930s, and Drucker had just landed in New York, having fled the Nazis. Whenever he happened to spend the weekend in Washington, Drucker recalled years later, he would sneak into Rankin Chapel to be "shaken and moved" by Howard Thurman, the chaplain at Howard University. His was the kind of voice, said Drucker, that "reached the inner core of one's being."

Thurman's soul-stirring oratory, as well as relationships… more

Buffett's Plan For Successful Succession

Ron Tang — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:00:00 -0400

A couple of weeks ago, Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett officially put the kibosh on what many an investor must have regarded as the ultimate succession plan: "I've reluctantly discarded the notion of continuing to manage the portfolio after my death -- abandoning my hope to give new meaning to the term 'thinking outside the box,'" Buffett, 77, wrote in his annual letter to shareholders.

Despite his tongue-in-cheek approach, Buffett touched on one of the most important issues an enterprise faces: figuring out who's the right person to one day take the reins.

A company's very "survival," Peter Drucker wrote in his… more

Wide-Angle Thinking

Ron Tang — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:22:00 -0500

Charles Handy has been called "the Peter Drucker of Britain." But in a sense, pinning Handy to a particular place misses the whole point.

In the last year alone, this venerated thinker and writer on organizational behavior and society has left his home near London to spend time in Hong Kong, China, Romania, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, and India. He's also made three trips to the U.S., where he just wrapped up a five-week stay as a scholar-in-residence at Claremont Graduate University's Drucker School of Management and the Drucker Institute, of which I am the director.

It was there that… more

What Can Microsoft Offer Yahoo?

Ron Tang — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

You'd be hard-pressed to find many things to which Peter Drucker was as openly hostile as the hostile takeover.

In his book The New Realities, he went so far as to call the gobbling up of companies in this fashion "the most serious assault on management in its history -- a far more serious assault than any mounted by Marxists."

Mind you, he made these comments in 1989, when all too many real-life Gordon Gekkos were commanding center stage. What rankled Drucker was the tendency of these corporate raiders to quickly dismantle the enterprises they'd just gotten their hands on,… more

Muhammad Yunus: The Unlikely Disciple

Ron Tang — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

There is no shortage of people who exemplify Peter Drucker's principles and practices -- a multitude of middle managers and top executives responsible for many millions, if not billions, of dollars in economic activity. Yet the most Drucker-like of all may well be a man who launched his enterprise with a series of transactions totaling 27 bucks.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who pioneered the concept of microcredit -- providing the poorest of the poor with tiny loans to start their own moneymaking ventures -- is promoting a new idea these days. He calls it "social business," and in… more

Wikia's People-Powered Engine

Ron Tang — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

As I sat down to work on this column, I couldn't help but feel as if I should be lending my voice to the "Wikia Search stinks" chorus. After all, the Internet search engine, rolled out this month by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, didn't seem to be doing much to enhance the standing of my organization, the Drucker Institute.

When I typed our name into the search field, I got reasonably close: The top result that popped up was the Web site for our affiliate, the Peter F. Drucker & Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management. But our own site… more

Where Goes the Neighborhood?

adminn — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:15:00 -0500

The new year has begun without Larchmont Hardware, a small shop that opened its doors in 1925 in the middle of Larchmont Boulevard -- a two-block stretch between Beverly Boulevard and 1st Street known in the neighborhood simply as "the village."

It was the sort of store that kept dog bones at the front counter for customers' pets to chew on. Edwin, the clerk, was always happy to chitchat while you scrounged for a single bolt to buy. When Mario, the manager, died in a terrible accident last year, hundreds of Larchmont Hardware regulars showed up for his memorial service.

The hardware… more

Getting from Giving

adminn — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 11:51:00 -0500

'Tis the season for giving. Yet, as Peter Drucker knew so well, the rewards from such actions flow two ways -- not just to those in need, but to those who get a lift from making a difference in an all-too-troubled world.

That is why on Christmas day I went over to a church not far from my house to help dish up dinner for the hungry and homeless. Dozens of volunteers from my synagogue and elsewhere passed out about 1,000 plates of food. Many others, of course, will participate in similar activities today -- and every day. Volunteering across the… more

For Managers, Ignorance Isn't Bliss

adminn — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 22:49:00 -0500

About two years before he died, Peter Drucker told an interviewer that among the things he regretted in the course of his long and productive career was not writing a book -- it would have been his 40th -- called Managing Ignorance. He added, tantalizingly, that it was bound to have been his best, but otherwise he didn't elaborate.

I've been thinking a fair bit lately about Drucker's work-that-wasn't, wondering what such a volume might have explored. Most likely, it seems, Drucker was interested in figuring out how those running corporations and other institutions could get their arms around what they… more

Has Toyota Lost Its Way?

adminn — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:40:00 -0500

The Toyota Way might just as well be called the Drucker Way.

As much as any company anywhere, Toyota Motor eagerly embraced many of the key principles that Peter Drucker first laid out in the 1940s and '50s: that corporations must move away from a "command and control" structure and cultivate a true spirit of teamwork at all levels; that line workers must adopt a managerial outlook and take responsibility for the quality of what they produce; that the enterprise must be steered by a clear set of objectives while giving each employee the autonomy to decide how to reach those… more

The Countrywide Conundrum

Articles — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:41:00 -0500

It's more than a little difficult to imagine Angelo Mozilo, the embattled chief executive of mortgage lending giant Countrywide Financial, being a Drucker disciple. But just last year he didn't hesitate to paint himself that way and, in at least one sense, he was right.

"As the late Peter Drucker once said, the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity," Mozilo told an audience of bond holders, bankers, and others. "This is the essence of Countrywide's culture."

Countrywide, lashed like many other companies by the subprime storm, isn't crowing as much anymore. A few weeks… more

Google: A Druckerian Ideal?

Articles — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:15:00 -0400

Google turned out quite a dazzling display of data recently when it released its third-quarter results: Profit jumped 46%. Revenue soared 57%. The company’s shares shot up $6.14, to more than $639 each, on the news. But it’s another set of figures that most impresses me: 17, $0, and 20%.

These refer, respectively, to the number of cafés at Google’s Mountain View (Calif.) campus; what it charges employees for all the meals and snacks eaten there; and the amount of time it encourages its engineers to carve out each week to tackle company-related projects that interest them personally but aren’t… more

Drucker on…Radiohead?

Articles — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:23:00 -0400

Peter Drucker loved music -- Haydn and Beethoven, Mozart and Mahler. Were the late management philosopher around these days, however, he would undoubtedly be grabbed by the newest offering from an altogether different sort of act: the British rock band Radiohead.

Not its synthesizer-driven sound. Drucker, rather, would be struck by Radiohead’s bold focus (BusinessWeek.com, 10/09/07) on something that far too many businesses overlook: pricing. If effectively tied to an overall marketing strategy, it can be a powerful tool in helping an enterprise seize opportunities.

Last week, Radiohead began to distribute its latest album, In Rainbows. Consumers can download it… more

The Problem with GM's UAW Deal

Articles — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 13:13:00 -0400

In 1946, Peter Drucker’s intimate, multiyear examination of General Motors (GM), Concept of the Corporation, was published. GM hated it.

Drucker’s take -- that the then-wildly-successful automaker might want to reexamine a host of long-standing policies on customer relations, dealer relations, employee relations, and more -- was viewed from inside the corporation as hypercritical. GM’s revered chairman, Alfred Sloan, was so upset about the book that he "simply treated it as if it did not exist," Drucker later recalled, "never mentioning it and never allowing it to be mentioned in his presence."

The United Auto Workers didn’t exactly embrace Drucker’s thinking either.… more

Peter Drucker: Timeless, Ubiquitous

Articles — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:01:00 -0400

A few Sundays ago, I was sitting in my home office, working on an outside writing project -- an historical narrative that has nothing to do with my day job as director of the Drucker Institute. The think tank’s mission is to advance the teachings of the late Peter Drucker, the man widely hailed as "the father of modern management."

My stack of reading this day included a 1939 article from The Nation magazine that explored a long-forgotten pension scheme, popularly known as Ham and Eggs, which failed twice at the ballot box in Depression-era California. I was breezing right… more

Drucker's Lessons for China

adminn — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 06:55:00 -0400

The most dangerous thing being produced in China is neither lead paint-laden toy cars nor magnet-spewing Polly Pocket dolls and Batman action figures. Rather, it is a booming capitalist culture that, far too often, places value over values.

This reality was brought home again this week, as Mattel announced its second big recall of Chinese-made merchandise in a fortnight. The news, coming on the heels of Chinese food, drugs, and other items being recalled or fingered as potentially hazardous, resulted in a renewed round of pleas in Washington for heightened vigilance by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.… more

Can the Ports Clean the Air Without Choking the Economy?

adminn — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 10:23:00 -0400

1,100 Reasons to Hang Up

Articles — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 10:08:00 -0400

Anybody who knows anything about business, whether a Fortune 500 CEO or a kid with a corner lemonade stand, can recite the mantra: The customer is always right. So what was Sprint Nextel Corp. thinking when it told 1,100 or so wireless subscribers that it was dumping them for chronically complaining to the company’s customer-service department?

The news, which broke this week, hasn’t exactly helped Sprint’s image. ABC’s Good Morning America ran the story under a banner that proclaimed: "You Must Be Kidding!" One consumer watchdog called the company’s action "absolutely outrageous."

But, in fact, Sprint’s move was not only reasonable, it… more

Organizing the L.A. Times Pressroom

Articles — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 13:23:00 -0400

It’s tough to imagine what Gen. Harrison Gray Otis -- the bellicose press baron with the steely gaze and a speaking voice once likened to "that of a game warden roaring at seal poachers" -- would make of his family’s recent decision to sever the last of its ties with the Los Angeles Times.

The 19th-century publisher, were he looking down upon this vale, couldn’t be too happy that his descendants have walked away from the paper he built. At the same time, Otis was a savvy enough businessman that he might at least take some pleasure from the terms… more