Legacy MattersAlmost a week later, I still haven't gathered my thoughts about Peter Drucker, a man I admired immensely. Reading more about him in BusinessWeek, a cover story on The Man Who Invented Management, why Peter Drucker's ideas still matter, I realized that I've gotten most of my self-education about business from him.
I went to law school, not business school, but if I had gone to business school, I never would encountered Drucker there. He wasn't and isn't taught in business schools yet Tom Peters says, "He was the creator and inventor of modern management" and Jack Welch says, "He was the greatest management thinker of the last century."
-- It was Drucker who introduced the idea of decentralization -- in the 1940s -- which became a bedrock principle for virtually every large organization in the world.
-- He was the first to assert -- in the 1950s -- that workers should be treated as assets, not as liabilities to be eliminated.
-- He originated the view of the corporation as a human community -- again, in the 1950s -- built on trust and respect for the worker and not just a profit-making machine, a perspective that won Drucker an almost godlike reverence among the Japanese.
-- He first made clear -- still the '50s -- that there is "no business without a customer," a simple notion that ushered in a new marketing mind-set.
-- He argued in the 1960s -- long before others -- for the importance of substance over style, for institutionalized practices over charismatic, cult leaders.
-- And it was Drucker again who wrote about the contribution of knowledge workers -- in the 1970s -- long before anyone knew or understood how knowledge would trump raw material as the essential capital of the New Economy.
He was also a Renaissance Man - journalist, professor, historian, economics commentator, and raconteur,.... a teacher of religion, philosophy, political science, and Asian art, even a novelist.
Like all great thinkers, he observed the material world and found answers in himself which is probably why business schools, leaning heavily on academic and empirical research, ignored him.
Part of Drucker's genius lay in his ability to find patterns among seemingly unconnected disciplines. Warren Bennis, a management guru himself and longtime admirer of Drucker, says he once asked his friend how he came up with so many original insights. Drucker narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "I learn only through listening," he said, pausing, "to myself."
He emigrated to London when Hitler took power and from there to America.
"America was terribly exciting," remembered Drucker. "In Europe the only hope was to go back to 1913. In this country everyone looked forward."
Drucker was a very wise man and Jim Collins writes about the lessons he learned from this student of life. Drucker focused on his work, declining all requests to contribute articles, take part in panels, join committees, give interviews with a preprinted card; yet, would give freely of his time to a unknown writer and change the trajectory of Collins's life by asking the question, "What do you want to contribute?" It's not what you get or what you achieve but what you contribute that counts in this life.
Collins concludes in a great paean, saying what can only be said about the greatest of men and women.
Drucker's most important lessons cannot be found in any text or lecture but in the example of his life. I made a personal pilgrimage to Claremont, Calif., in 1994 seeking wisdom from the greatest management thinker of our age, and I came away feeling that I'd met a compassionate and generous human being who -- almost as a side benefit -- was a prolific genius.We have lost not a guru on a pedestal but a beloved professor who welcomed students into his modest home for warm and stimulating conversation. Peter F. Drucker was driven not by the desire to say something but by the desire to learn something from every student he met -- and that is why he became one of the most influential teachers most of us have ever known.
For me, reading what Peter Drucker said in 1999 about "Managing Oneself" has inspired my current work.
IN a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long term perspective, I think it is very probable that the most important event these historians will see is not technology, it is not the Internet, it is not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time -- and I mean that literally -- for the first time, substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And let me say, we are totally unprepared for it.
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We will have to learn where we belong, what our strengths are, what we have to learn so that we get the full benefit from it, where our defects are, what we are not good at, where we belong, what our values are. For the first time in human history, we will have to learn to take responsibility for managing ourselves. And as I said, this is probably a much bigger change than any technology -- a change in the human condition. Nobody teaches it -- no school, no college -- and [it] probably will be another hundred years before they teach it.
In the meantime, the achievers, and I don't mean millionaires, but rather the ones who want to make a contribution, who want to lead a fulfilling life, and want to feel that there is some purpose in their being on this earth. They will have to learn something which, only a few years ago, a very few super achievers ever knew. They will have to learn to manage themselves, to build on their strengths, to build on their values.
Peter Drucker, a remarkable life, a good man, a Great Legacy. 
Rest in Peace.