Customer Reviews
Back to the Future!
Recently, I read JACK by GE's Jack Welch. In it, he praises Drucker as one of the best management minds ever. High praise from the person most consider to be THE best CEO America has ever produced. This collection of the best of Drucker's writings is amazing in its clarity, depth, and breadth. To consider that many were written years ago but remain SO current in today's globalized world is truly amazing.
I found myself unable to resist highlighting with my magic marker this passage or that passage. This book is extremely readable and would make a wonderful gift to your favorite manager or to that manager you would like to see develop. My copy, only a few weeks old, is already "dog-earred" from repeatedly going back to read and re-read Drucker's wonderful insights, inspirations, and chastisements.
You will be really sorry if you do not get this book for yourself. You, your work team, and your organization need/deserve it. Invest in a resource that really will have a meaningful return for you.
DRUCKER IS THE BOMB! THIS BOOK IS THE MGMT BOOK!
BUY THE BOOK! Don't read any more reviews, just buy it! More importantly, READ IT, front to back and absorb the material. You'll be on your way to a different understanding of business principles.
Peter Drucker, the author of the book, is a distinguished professor and has the University of Claremont's business school NAMED after him. He has continuously identified critical principles in management, economics, politics, and the world in general. If most workers and managers read his teachings and practiced them people would have a much better grasp of the business world.
The "Essential Drucker" is the best business book I have come across on the philosophy of management. He truly understands business and what makes a corporation effective, the managers. Jack Welch has praised Drucker as one of the best writers of management he has come across. I enjoyed some Drucker articles in business school and read his most recent book Management Challenges for the 21st century prior to picking this book up. If you are looking for another simple and very effective business book try What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan, a Stanford professor. That book is only 150 pages and very simple to read/understand but the basics are what 9 out of 10 managers fail to execute.
This book is very interesting because it covers such a wide array of topics with over 60 years worth of writings by Mr. Drucker. The book is segmented into 3 sections, the individual, management and society. I am thoroughly glad that Mr. Drucker continually focuses on how corporations and managers affect society and how society affect the decisions that managers will need to make as you rarely will find that in a business book.
Drucker understands business better than 99.999% of the folks out there. BUY THE BOOK folks. It truly is great work. I can't say it enough.
Here are the sources of the chapters:
The New Realities, Chapters 1 and 26;
Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, Chapters 2, 3, 5, and 18;
Managing for the Future, Chapters 4 and 19;
Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Chapters 6, 15, 21;
Managing in a Time of Great Change, Chapters 7 and 23;
Practice of Management, Chapter 8;
Frontiers of Management, Chapter 9;
Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Chapters 10-12, 20, and 24;
The Effective Executive, Chapters 13, 14, 16, and 17; and
Post-Capitalist Society, Chapters 22 and 25.
Very good introduction to Drucker
This is a good book if you are just introducing yourself to Peter Drucker. The author makes several wise selections in the excerpts he chooses especially the section on entrepreneurial strategies from Drucker's 1985 book Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
