Management Challenges for the 21St Century

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Summary: Valuable insights by a great master
Review: This is not the first Peter Drucker's book i read. But i realize this is the better one. Their concepts on management, and the challenges coming up, not only for business but goverment and people too, create new lines for research, practice and discussion on the never complete science-art-method of managing entities into a ever changing social world. But this book would not get an academic prize. This is not the basic concern the author had in mind. Since the first chapter, when he makes a in-depth review on the managemet's basic assumptions, until the end, when he writes a brilliant chapter about personal management, there is a basic concern, what is, improve our potential to make the difference, to translate into better actions what you are reading. As he writes in the introduction, this book is a call for action.

After reading this book you will be a little bit more worried about the future, and you will feel a little bit more involved in understandig the trends, the troubles, the risks, that are around our bussineses, in order to build up solutions in advance.

A book to have near (at your bedroom, at the office, at your desk), to remind every time basic things. And to act.

Rating:
Summary: The Book That Shapes The Mind
Review: If you are going to do anything that remotely resembles work or business in the 21st century, let alone live effectively, you have to have a mind that is,in my opinion,adaptive and awake. This book is sufficient catalyst to do just that - to awaken the mind to meet the challenges of the 21st century. I am shaping my personal strategy as an entrepreneur with the information gathered from reading this book. The chapter on Managing Oneself is worth the price of the entire book. Shall I say more? Light is the dissapearance of darkness. Enlightenment is the absence of ignorance. You choose.

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Summary: The Wisdom of Perspective
Review: Surveying the authors in today's "Business & Finance" section can give you an acute case of guru overload. Leadership gurus. Management gurus. Self-actualization gurus. Egotists. Hagiographers. Monomaniacs. Sheepish academics in vulpine inspirational-speaker clothing. Thinkers who can't write. Writers with nothing to say. It's enough to make a grown critic weep.

But soft! what light from yonder bookshelf breaks? It is Peter Drucker, and his writing is the sun. For over sixty years, Drucker has built his reputation on his penetrating insight, deadpan style, intelligent marshalling of facts, and sturdy common sense. Drucker's books and articles don't tout crackpot theories, or substitute emphasis for evidence. He recognizes how the world truly works, and decries baseless shoulds and untested presumptions as "simply nonsense". Above all Drucker offers perspective: intelligent observations, practical advice, and a historically informed long view that distinguishes genuine challenges from faux revolutions.

_Management Challenges for the 21st Century_, the latest in Drucker's string of successes, is a welcome antidote to the widespread contagion of alarmist, brave-new-world, everything-you-believed-is-wrong assertions. Drucker enjoys testing assumptions, and he begins by debunking some of the most jealously guarded, including "management is business management" and "management is internally focused". He knows what's new, what's old, and where the true distinctions lie, decrying the "totally incomprehensible distinction between management and entrepreneurship" and remarking wryly that today's Information Revolution is merely the fourth of its kind in world history (and not even the fastest or most sweeping). Strategy has its place in the sun, and Drucker's recommendations and "organized abandonment" approach are as revealing as anything ever produced by Michael Porter - and much more readable. The final chapter of _Management Challenges_ is the most immediately useful, for here the author takes a refreshingly balanced look at managing oneself. Styles, values, even manners have their place, and Drucker's invitation to capitalize on strengths and take responsibility for relationships will win the hearts of all the square pegs trying to pound themselves into round corporate holes.

No book is perfect, unfortunately. Putting aside Drucker's comic-strip APPROACH to EMPHASIS, there is at times a suggestion of old wine in new bottles, although the wine is of a particularly excellent vintage. But no connoisseur or novice need carp at the pleasures offered by _Management Challenges for the 21st Century_. If you read only one Business & Finance book this June, read this one. Summertime is too fleeting for guru overload.

Rating:
Summary: The Most Timely of Peter Drucker's Books
Review: MANAGEMENT CHALLEGES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY is a breakthrough work, even for Peter Drucker. Through 6 impressive essays, Professor Drucker sets the agenda for the next several decades, for every organization and individual. He begins by pointing out that the way most people think about management is all wrong, and immediately needs to be changed. He outlines the needed changes. He then picks the key strategy issues that will strongly affect all organizations for the next 50 years. Next, he points out that we live in turbulent times and that one must lead the changes that one's organization must make so they occur faster than for the competition. There is no choice for any organization, except to fail to survive. From there, he points out that we have information TECHNOLOGY, but very little information worth looking at on the devices the technology brings us. He goes on to define what must be done to create the right information. In a remarkable section, he then tells how to create knowledge worker productivity (something he has said in the past that no one knows how to do). Finally, he provides a remarkable essay on how to get the most out of yourself, for yourself. These essays were previewed in leading publications, and substantially improved from the originals. There is no repetition of his work and thinking from earlier books. This is like finding a whole new Peter Drucker. I especially loved the new examples that he included, as well as his historical references that only Peter Drucker can make. YOU ARE MAKING A BIG MISTAKE IF YOU FAIL TO BUY, READ, AND APPLY THE IMPORTANT LESSONS OF THIS BOOK. If you read only one book by Peter Drucker, read this one! I was especially pleased to see that he addressed the stalls that delay organizational progress such as the old habits reinforced by tradition, unwillingness to address the new through disbelief, poor communications at all levels (he states the rules that you must follow to be a better communicator and be more effective), needless interactions fostering mindless bureaucracy, the temptation to procrastinate (standing still in front of a truck about to run you over is a mistake you will not repeat), avoiding the unattractive key issues of your organiztion (he recommends doing the dirty jobs yourself for several weeks a year in order to understand how to improve), and failing to set high standards. As always, the book is filled with powerful questions that you can answer for yourself in order to accomplish much, much more and feel great while you do so. Read and apply the lessons of this book and you will have many more 2,000 percent solutions (achieving 20 times the usual results with the same resources or getting the same results 20 times faster).

Rating:
Summary: Quality and mesmerizing book
Review: This is a straightforward, no-holes-barred book on leadership that gets to the bottom line quickly: what is happening now (not in the future) in organizations that's good and not-so-good. It reads well and gives quite a bit of insight into the challenges. Very well organized and provoking.

Also recommend Drucker's brilliant other works and also a thought-provoking book: "The Leader's Guide: 15 Essential Skills."

Rating:
Summary: A true classic
Review: This book is a true classic. Peter Drucker is the father of modern management, and his influence is everywhere in business today. If you're interested in becoming a better manager, you just can't go wrong with this book.

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Summary: EXCELLENT BOOK ON THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY
Review: First published in Forbes magazine, California Management Review and Harvard Business Review, the six chapters in this book contain nothing that is an excerpt from Peter Drucker's earlier management books. Indeed, this book supplements Drucker's many earlier management books by looking ahead to the future of management thinking and practice.

At 90, Peter Drucker is, by all accounts, the most enduring management thinker of our time. Born in Vienna, educated in Austria and England, he has worked since 1937 in the United States, first as an economist for a group of British banks and insurance companies, and later as a management consultant to several leading companies. Drucker has since had a distinguished career as a teacher, including more than twenty years as Professor of Management at the Graduate Business School of New York University. Since 1971 he has been Marie Rankin Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management, Claremont Graduate University in California, where he still teaches in the fields of management and business policy.

With a long-term business perspective second to none, Drucker's books span sixty years of modern history beginning with The End of Economic Man (1939) and Managing in a Time of Great Change; Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices; Innovation and Entrepreneurship; The Effective Executive; Managing for Results and The Practice of Management.

This book looks afresh at the future of management thinking and practice and defines new ways of delivering success. It deals exclusively with tomorrow's hot management issues-the crucial, central, life-and-death issues that are certain to be the major challenges of tomorrow. The biggest challenge will be knowledge worker productivity-what is it; how can it work; how do we manage knowledge workers and ourselves? Two fundamental issues addressed are changes in the world economy and the subsequent changes in management practice which will bring about new realities requiring new corporate policies as well as presenting new opportunities for the individual knowledge worker.

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 organisations of today's society, particularly the more rigid and less flexible, i.e. the ones more rooted in the concepts, assumptions and policies of the 19th century. The challenges and issues discussed in this book are not new and are already with us in every one of the developed countries and in most of the emerging ones. They can already be identified, discussed, analyzed and prescribed for. Some people, someplace, are already working on them. But so far very few executives and even less organisations are. Those who do work on these challenges today, and thus prepare themselves and their organisations for the new challenges, will be the leaders and will dominate tomorrow.

Reviewed by Azlan Adnan. Azlan is Managing Partner of Azlan & Koh Knowledge and Professional Management Group, a management consulting practice based in Kota Kinabalu. He holds a Master's degree in International Business and Management from the University of Westminster in London.

Rating:
Summary: Good for hand few of the Civilisation
Review: A large part of the world is exposed to grave state. This is the stark reality. There has been several monumental works on the how business should think for the future. But with all of these and 1000s Peter Drucker and Dr.C.K.Prahalads the proverty in India and other third world countries will still exist. Looks like even the concept of Spirituality of improved consciuosness is becoming corporate jargon. Where does the real answer lie?

Rating:
Summary: Management Challenges for the 21st Century
Review: This book confirms my opinion that Peter Drucker is still America's management guru!

Rating:
Summary: Class act
Review: I've recently purchased some management books at Amazon, and this one is one of the best. Mr. Drucker has precise and plain spoken knowledge he imparts to us about the challenges that management face (motivation, competition, e.g.). His years of experience are easily shared in this book.

Other superb books I recommend that I have recently read are Ponder's "The Leader's Guide: 15 Essential Skills," and any Ken Blanchard or Warren Bennis book.