FOREWORD

I must confess that my first reaction when I learned of the title of Bill Cohen's new book, The Practical Drucker, was to think to myself: “Hmmm. Perhaps an official from the Department of Redundancy Department should be asked to write the foreword instead.”

In my mind, after all, Drucker and practicality are synonymous. Calling a book The Practical Drucker is like referring to someone as a “big giant” or a 100-story building as a “tall skyscraper.”

Indeed, Drucker was so practical that much of the scholarly community regarded him as a pariah. Although he taught at four institutions of higher learning over his long career—Sarah Lawrence College, Bennington College, New York University, and Claremont Graduate University—Drucker never fit the mold of many of his colleagues. Those around him often seemed most interested in racking up citations in peer-reviewed academic journals; Drucker, for his part, was focused on making a difference in the real world.

“Being incomprehensible has become a virtue in academia,” Drucker complained in the mid-1980s. By contrast, he added, “I have a deep horror of obscurity and arrogance”—a trait that constantly pushed him to present his work “in a form that people could apply.”

He hardly used footnotes. He eschewed regression analysis, charts, and graphs. As a consultant to major corporations and nonprofits, he stressed the need to put ideas into action. “Don't tell me you had a wonderful meeting with me,” he'd say. “Tell me what you're going to do on Monday that's different.”

Theory was fine with Drucker, but only insofar as it helped to lead to pragmatic solutions to pressing issues. “Sure, we want and need research,” he said. “But consider the modern medical school, which began in the late 18th century. The emphasis in medical school is not on publication but on the ability to treat patients and make a difference in their lives.” In a similar manner, he believed, “business educators should be out as practitioners where the problems and results are.”

This fundamental insight—that writing about management and leadership isn't worth a whole lot if it isn't rooted in the day-to-day trials of organizational life—lies at the heart of Drucker's work. It is also where many of his peers get things backward.

“Intellectuals and scholars tend to believe that ideas come first, which then lead to new political, social, economic, psychological realities,” Drucker wrote. “This does happen, but it is the exception. As a rule, theory does not precede practice. Its role is to structure and codify already proven practice. Its role is to convert the isolated and ‘atypical’ from exception to ‘rule’ and ‘system,’ and therefore into something that can be learned and taught and, above all, into something that can be generally applied.”

This bent toward application, toward action, toward usefulness, animated everything that Drucker did. In the end, it was what set him apart. Drucker “spoke in plain language that resonated with ordinary managers,” Andy Grove, the co-founder of Intel, has remarked. “Consequently, simple statements from him have influenced untold numbers of daily actions; they did mine over decades.”

Tom Peters, the best-selling management writer who also bends strongly toward the practical, once praised Drucker for his pioneering role in helping “incredibly complex organizations” run better. “Drucker was the first person to give us a handbook for that,” he said.

Actually, that's not quite right. Rather than produce one handbook, Drucker penned thirty-nine books and thousands of articles over many decades—a trove so immense that, all in all, it may add up to the most impractical thing he ever did.

How many times have you ever thought, “What would Drucker say?” about a particular situation—and then tried to quickly find the answer? Where do you begin? Perhaps The Practice of Management is the best source. But what about Managing for Results? No, wait. Maybe what you really need is a later text, like Management Challenges for the 21st Century. Searching through this vast ocean of content when all you want to take away is a single glass of water can be difficult, if not downright frustrating.

Drucker's output was so massive, it led another best-selling management writer, Jim Collins, to ask a pointed question. Although Collins is a huge Drucker fan, he couldn't help but wonder, “Do you think Peter Drucker would have been more influential if he had written less?”

I'd argue no, but I get the point. And this is where Bill Cohen's book comes in. By combing through Drucker's enormous body of work and deftly synthesizing the “how to do” (as opposed to the “what to do”) aspects of his writing, Bill has made a great contribution. In this way, The Practical Drucker is less redundant and more a revelation.

“Knowledgeable executives are plentiful,” Drucker observed shortly before he passed away in 2005. “But executives are not being paid for knowing. They are being paid for getting the right things done.” The Practical Drucker is a terrific road map for achieving this all-important end.

Rick Wartzman

Executive Director, The Drucker Institute