Rating: 
Summary: A must read for some Managers.
Review: If you Manage a large firm, be responsible and read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Peter Drucker Does It Again!
Review: 'Management Challenges for the 21st Century' is a book by a ninety-year-old -- about the future! However, as the ninety-year-old is Dr. Peter F. Drucker, the guru of modern management practices, that is a great thing. His work truly does represent a full ninety years of accumulated knowledge (one can sense his zest for knowledge in his writing), and his writing style has actually improved over the last thirty years (The editing of this book was somewhat spotty, though -- there are several spelling and grammatical errors that detract from the work. This is unfortunate, as Dr. Drucker deserves much better from HarperCollins, his publisher of sixty years.) In fact, Dr. Drucker started writing this book as an retrospective of his past work but, as he wrote and researched, he set that aside to write not of the known past, but of the unknown future.In the book, one of his primary points is that, over the next century, management will increase the productivity of the knowledge worker (a term Dr. Drucker himself invented over thirty years ago) fifty-fold, which is the increase in the productivity of the manual worker during the Industrial Revolution. For this to happen, knowledge workers will be essentially self-managed. They will be responsible for their own contributions, they will be continuously innovating, and they will be continuously learning and teaching (he has an interesting chapter on how people learn). The difficulty to companies is that knowledge workers are capital assets, not costs, as they possess knowledge. This presents unique challenges to managers as, unlike with manual workers, the company needs the knowledge worker almost as much as the knowledge worker needs the company. He discusses the collapsing birthrate and its impact on knowledge workers, relative to career length and focus. He also discusses future shifts in distribution of disposable income, a redefinition of corporate performance, global competitiveness, and the growing incongruence between economic and political reality. He also discusses how to be a change leader in the future. ("One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it.") This involves innovation and careful piloting of new ideas. He follows up with his perspective on the increase in available of information, which he says was paralleled by Gutenberg's invention of printing press. He urges that the focus of IT be on the information, not on the technology. This is an outstanding book, and I highly recommend it. I hope he chooses to write a few more.
Rating:
Summary: A Book For All Professionals, Not Just Managers
Review: Peter Drucker is a thinker who gets to the heart of issues and can make one see the world, and one's self, in a different way. That may seem like a grandiose claim for what, on the surface, is merely a business book. But if you're the least bit familiar with Drucker's numerous books and articles, written over a 60-year career, you already suspect that this isn't a mere business book. We live in times of turbulent change. Drucker's task is to make us SEE, to give us guiding insights and principles. He illuminates the deeper forces of history, of economics, of society, which managers in ALL kinds of instituations - hospitals, universities, churches, nonprofits, governments, and of course businesses - will inevitably face. Drucker not only calls for a new paradigm of management, but he outlines that new paradigm - and more importantly, contrasts it with the old paradigm. The word paradigm itself has become cliche, but Drucker's analysis is hardly fluffy or faddish. And that's just in the first chapter. In the rest of this brief (207 pages) but potent book, he expounds (as evidenced by the chapter titles) on the following themes: Strategy - The New Certainties; The Change Leader; Information Challenges; Knowledge-Worker Productivity; Managing Oneself. The latter chapter alone - which is about managing one's career(s) in light of the insights provided in the foregoing chapters - is alone worth the price of admission. There are several small gems of practical advice in that chapter alone, and it also gives one food for ongoing thought (as does the rest of the book). As Drucker himself concludes, this book is ultimately not about the future of management. It's about the future of society. In reading it (or any of Drucker's other works), you get the sense you're in the presence of a great thinker who has a passion for truth. This book isn't just for managers, it's for all "knowledge workers" who seek a sophisticated perspective on deep historical forces which will affect everybody in all developed countries. Drucker consciously intended - and in my opinion succeeded - to write a practical book for people who aren't afraid to think and challenge their assumptions about the world and themselves. Drucker's focus is utlimately on *action*. He doesn't give recipes, he gives questions, insights, and principles on which to formulate actions and make decisions. He even offers advice on how to get the most out of his book. A couple of notes about Drucker's writing style, for those who haven't read him before: Drucker's prose and word rhythms can sometimes be quirky. He has a fondness for occasionally "quoting" words and for EMPHASIZING THINGS IN CAPITAL LETTERS. He's not a fuzzy-minded loudmouth, though. That's part of his natural, unpretentious style, and his message doesn't suffer for it. Also, in this particular book, Drucker uses a layout technique which I initially found to be confusing, but I eventually came to appreciate. He sprinkles the entire book - without warning or explanation - with paragraphs that are indented further in from the "main" paragraphs. At first I thought he was quoting himself from his earlier works. But I finally realized that the indented paragraphs are "meat", in the form of specific examples or historical references. Once I figured that out, they didn't bother me, and in fact I appreciated the layout. In summary: read this book! It's much more worthwhile than most business or change-your-life seminars, which can cost hundreds of times more.
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