Management Is About Human Beings - The Chad Barr GroupThe Chad Barr Group

The brilliant thinker Peter Drucker who invented management as a field of study and research, died today at the age 95. As noted in the Wall Street Journal and in Drucker’s book, The Essential Drucker:

Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

Because management deals with the integration of people in a common venture, it is deeply embedded in culture. What managers do in Germany, in the United Kingdom, in the United States, in Japan, or in Brazil is exactly the same. How they do it may be quite different.

Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution. Training and developing must be built into it on all levels – training and development that never stop.

Profitability is not the purpose of, but a limiting factor on business enterprise and business activity. Profit is not the explanation, cause or rationale of business behavior and business decisions, but rather the test of their validity.

True marketing starts out … with the customer, his demographics, his realities, his needs, his values. It does not ask, What do we want to sell? It asks, What does the customer want to buy?

In every single business failure of a large company in the last few decades, the board was the last to realize that things were going wrong. To find a truly effective board, you are much better advised to look in the nonprofit sector in our public corporations.

In mid-2002, President Bush awarded Mr. Drucker the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award the government can bestow. Also:
Business Week Magazine – “The most enduring management thinker of our time”
Forbes Magazine – “Still the Youngest Mind”
Wired Magazine – “arch-guru of capitalism.”

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