Peter Drucker

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Managing for the future

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If you are a manager or leader at any position in an organisation, here is what Mr. Drucker would want you to practice:

  • Do what you say and say what you do. When you are a leader, people carefully observe you. People try to derive some meaning from every small gesture of a leader. Make sure that your gestures enable people to derive a positive meaning. Keep your promises and be as authentic as you can.

  • When you are a leader, you are here to ‘serve’ your people. You serve your people and enable them when ‘leadership’ springs from your heart. But when it gets into your head, that is where problem starts!

  • Leadership is all about performance. You, as a leader, have to build an integrated team and empower them to deliver great results. Leadership is a means to an end. We don’t lead because we want to, or because of our charisma or because of (a romantic idea of) power that comes with leadership. We lead because we seek results.

  • An ambiguous leader leads an ambiguous team. Clarity in thoughts, words and actions is one of the most important aspect of leading others. When you lead, people depend on you to give directions to them. If your directions are ambiguous, you will easily mislead them. Clear directions are the ones which clarifies expected outcomes, expected behaviors and establishes priorities, standards. Clarity also means that all decisions/directions are aligned with organization’s mission and values.

Most of what Peter Drucker mentioned in his book, “Managing for the Future” is more of common sense (at least from today’s perspective), and I think practicing them consistently is difficult. Have a fantastic Friday and a happy weekend!

Small transactions in awesomeness

Part of Western culture, the science and technology we developed is measuring things, even things that are unmeasurable. I think one of the pleasures of art is it takes us away from the world of measurement and allows us to feel enormous dwells of emotion.

““You can’t manage what you can’t measure.””
— Peter Drucker

Making a mark

We can measure time, units like cost and value, metrics and temperatures, but we don’t know how to measure feelings. And as a result we focus on what we can measure and not on what’s important. I think most people operate on primary motivations and the two default modes of human behaviour are habit and social copying. In other words, do what I have done before and do what everyone else does. Therefore, any new behaviours will take longer to adapt than you think. There are an awful lot of technologies that take a long time to penetrate or to become adopted but what’s really important is how sticky they are.

““If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” ”
— Peter Drucker

Being alert for the inevitable

Most of what Peter Drucker mentioned in his book, “Managing For The Future” is more of common sense, at least from today’s perspective. Practicing them consistently is difficult. I think the leaders first task is to be the trumpet that sounds a clear sound. Here are a few excerpts from the book that I particularly enjoyed:

“And nothing is noticed more quickly – and considered more significant – than a discrepancy between what executives preach and what they expect their associates to practice.”
— Peter Drucker
“The Japanese recognize that there are really only two demands of leadership. ONE is to accept that rank does not confer privileges; it entails responsibilities. The OTHER is to acknowledge that leaders in an organization need to impose on themselves that congruence between deeds and words, between behavior and professed beliefs and values, that we call ‘personal integrity’.”
— Peter Drucker

Knowing the scenario

I came across a book from Peter Drucker titled “Managing For The Future” which was first published in 1992. The power of great writing is that it is timeless. I read this old book and still enjoyed reading it because ideas presented in the book (specially on Leadership) are still very relevant today. The shape of corporate organisations has changed between 1992 and now. The nature of work has changed drastically too – we are out of factory model and into the knowledge oriented one, but the core principles of leadership have not changed. I think awareness, sensitivity and understanding are essential leadership skills required to lead in the 2020’s.

“Essence of leadership is not ‘leadership qualities’ or ‘charisma’. The essence of leadership is ‘performance’.”
— Peter Drucker

Team culture

Leaders need to connect, challenge, build a culture, clearly communicate, and commit to where they are going. It’s teamwork that makes the dreams work, and you are not a team because you work together, you are a team because you trust, respect and care for each other. I think it’s the peer to peer connection in a low trust world that leads culture to change. Are you part of a really engaging culture? 

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
— Peter Drucker

This quote means that the culture of your company always determines success regardless of how effective your strategy may be. Our tribe need to get so engaged in what we do that they tell their friends and that’s what changes culture. It’s important to understand that culture beats everything! Culture beats strategy, culture beats pricing, culture beats technology, culture always wins. So, our job is to change the culture and we do that 10 people at a time who then tell 10 people and so on. 

The pursuit of perfection

In today’s world, technology makes geography and size almost irrelevant, therefore, this gives us this unique opportunity to assert strong strategic leadership. Content marketing is not about choosing a keyword and writing an article to rank for it, it’s about having a deep understanding of your target audience and the information they’re looking for and being a credible and trustworthy source for that information. How do you know that is true?

“Strategy is a commodity, execution is art.”
— Peter Drucker
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Culture eats bureaucracy for lunch

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The legendary management consultant and writer Peter Drucker famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. If our well being is directly related to our environment and the work quality we produce, then we really should put more effort into thinking about how to optimise it. 


In his book, “Good to Great”, Jim Collins said, “If you get the right people on the buses everything else will sort itself out.” Perhaps it’s time to look at the coaching style of working together and focus on what empowers. This is an approach which will guide individuals to find their place, their role and their hidden talents, rather than putting restrictions on people and telling them what to do. Is your organisation prepared for feedback that is frank, open and honest?


I think that if you built your organisation around these principles - create the environment, employ the right people and develop the culture - your organisation will thrive. Are you interested in taking a deeper dive into your organisations communication and culture? Contact me via e-mail for coaching, mentoring or workshops.

How does what we do change the lives of our customers?

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Running a business is very hard. You have to stay true to yourself, your passion and be consistent. You can reduce stress by not having strong opinions on subjects outside of your expertise. Today, customers expect you to know them and know what they want, in the moment.


Contact me for coaching, consulting, workshops or lecturing via e-mail and let’s arrange a non-binary virtual meeting to discuss the opportunities.

“Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art. - Peter Drucker”