The Practice of Management by Peter F. Drucker

The Practice of Management Reviews

• 
  Tomasz

  This book was written 60 years ago and it feels like most of the Drucker's thoughts are still of the moment. Whats more, in many modern books about management you can notice that authors "discover america" again. For some insights it took decades until they were proved empirically and described wider therefore more commonly used. An example here can be "focusing on strengths and managing weaknesses" which is the key point in "First, break all the rules" book that is based on Gallup research of the best performing managers. Drucker repeats this throughout the whole book with different contexts.
  
  There is one interesting part about preparing manager for his job (even from the early years of life). The most important things to focus on are:
  - writing poetry and short stories (they teach person how to express himself, teach him words and their meaning and above all give him practice in writing)
  - oral defense of "thesis" - should not be only once or twice but more often throughout the whole education
  - acquiring ability to see the environment and to understand it through history and the political sciences
  - learn economics and acquire tools of the economists
  
  I'm very impressed by his knowledge and the way of thinking as for 1950s, and if there wouldn't be examples that purely refer to industrial era - it wouldn't be possible to feel "the age" of this book.
  Book definitely for the second re-read in the future!
  
  
  My favorite quotes:
  
  "Improvement is not the matter of learning to read faster or public speaking. Manager needs to learn to know the language, to understand what words are and what they mean"
  
  "What manager has to do can be learned - but not necessary always taught"
  
  "Yesterdays good performance must become today's minimum; yesterday's excellence - today's common place..."
  
  "If one can "get fired" for poor performance one must also be able to "get rich" for extraordinary performance"
  
  "Purpose of organization - make common man do uncommon things"
  
  "One does not become broader by seeing another speciality (narrow) -> one becomes broader by seeing the business as a whole"
  
  "It is not enough that employee is satisfied, he needs to perform - and performance should be the main focus!"
• 
  Shagun Tripathi

  At the onset, I take his opportunity to mention that Drucker is, by far my favourite management writer and guru of all times and this book has been an excellent read. The reason is simple: he is direct, incisive in analysis and writes with unparalleled clarity. His erudition is observable in simplicity as opposed to complexity, a feat that his contemporaries will find difficult to achieve (I mention this because I am reading him after Barnard and Simon, both stalwarts of management, but none the closer to Drucker’s charismatic writing in my opinion). The instruments of his arguments are many and profound: anecdotes, reason, common sense and sometimes, blunt authority on management which only he can exercise in such convincing manner.
  
  And even then, the greatness of Drucker’s intellectual contribution is that he does not reason with the reader. While this may be an unusual remark, so I will try to explain what I mean in the following manner: Drucker does not argue with the reader, he does not position himself as external to his audience and then debate from the standpoint of a highly experienced consultant and professor. Instead, he is one with the mind of the reader, his tone is the dialectic that we hear in our own mind; his commentary helps us organize the many conflicting ideas we have harboured from casually scrolling past the abundant and ill-explained management wisdom of our times. Where it is absolutely necessary, he resolves all ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ with an authoritative stance that he asks his reader to accept at face value. When this is done, he masterfully and gently explains his stance and brings the reader to a new level of enlightenment, letting the reader feel the joy of discovery and power of his own reasoning. In fact, enlightening is a good adjective to describe all of Drucker’s work, in addition to prescient, diligent, conscientious analysis of the world around him.
  In the “Practice of Management”, Drucker has written a comprehensive treatise that remains the management bible of the day- so much so that even practitioners have hear of it. Here I must stress a very important point: reading Drucker leaves one surprised at how well he knows the mind of the practitioner. He has an access to the problems, challenges, ethical dilemmas, aspirations and daily operations of the management executive which he studies with the sharp eye of the scholar. This book is labyrinthine in its coverage of management in every way. What is even more remarkable, is how his ideas are alive, relevant and important today and shall possibly continue to hold value in the coming decades. From defining a motive of the organization to explaining forecasting methods in the business cycle, from goal setting and leadership to developing managers , from the structure of organizations to employing the whole individual, a host of novel ideas have been covered in this book that are guiding principles of managements and organizations today. It is difficult to pin-point the highlights of the book, because in my experience, each page has been delightful remarkable and full of snippets of wisdom that so often appear as quotes in the world of management. There is no argument or debate on reading Drucker’s ideas, he leaves no leeway for contrarian ideas. He has meticulously considered and explained all conceivable scenarios and one is left amazed at the vast expanse of wisdom that is discovered through the read. It is necessary to take time out to digest Drucker’s ideas so that one may utilize their wisdom in professional manner.
  
  My final thoughts on Drucker are an appreciation of his humanistic approach that does not conflict the financial goals of the organization. In my reading experiences with all other writers in management classics such as Taylor, Fayol, Mayo, Folett, Simon and Barnard, I have observe that each author had a choice of inclination between humanistic practices and profit. My impression thus was that the two were divergent objectives and that one could only be achieved at the cost of the other. I am therefore surprised and very impressed by how Drucker has woven the organization with its people, customers, innovation, marketing, leadership, profit and society into an integrated whole. A brief comment on his sociological outlook is that he aligns with the structural functionalism school of thought in sociology, explaining organizations with their organs and functions. “The Practice of Management” is a gripping read and suitable for the scholar and the practitioner alike, in its practical wisdom and scholarly intuition unparalleled by any other management classic I have read so far.
  
• 
  grebrim

  So everything people write about manangement was already known 50 years ago. That speaks both for Drucker and against decades of research on the matter. Read this if you're doing something that has remotely to do with management.
• 
  أحمد

  مجلة بيزنس ويك بتقول على بيتر دراكر إنه الشخص الذي اخترع الإدارة، وإظن إن دي مش مبالغة خالص، الكتاب ممتاز الحقيقة ... أغلب كتب الإدارة بتكون مكررة ومملة وساعات بتحول الإدارة لعلم خفيف لأغراض تسويق الكتاب، الكتاب ده مختلف تمامًا، بسيط، واقعي، حتى ده واضح من مجرد عنوانه The Practice of Management ، اللي هو مش علم الإدارة ولا أساسيات الإدارة ، ولا الهري ده .. الكتاب فعلًا بيتكلم عن ممارسة حقيقية للإدارة ، وبأسلوب مش ملل، مليان أمثلة لقصص شركات واقعية (زي فورد وسيزر وأي بي إم)، مع تحليل القصص ده وربطها بمواضيع الفصول.
  الكتاب إتكتب سنة 1954 ومع ذلك لا يزال محتواه صالح ومفيد جدًا ... أظن إني هبدأ في قراءته للمرة الثانية قريبًا جدًا لإن مرة واحدة مش كفاية.
  أنصح بيه أي حد بيفكر ينمي مهاراته الإدارية ونظرته للبيزنس عمومًا.
  
• 
  Richard

  Most books on management are dull, repetitive, unoriginal, and full of self-promotion. Drucker's book is the original. This is the book to read if you want to learn about management, how it impacts people, how to do it better, and how it can go disastrously wrong.
• 
  Iain Hamill

  To some extent a product of its time with the emphasis on the scientific management styles dominant in post-war America, but also directly applicable to management today, as Drucker highlights again and again how central human character is and how little that has changed since time began.
  
  It was good to see the development and original context of his seminal “management by objectives” theory but I also really appreciated the closing chapters on the challenges and opportunities of the future.
  
  The world is changing fast... but “there will be no new men to do these staggering tasks. The manager of tomorrow will not be a bigger man than his father was before him. He will be possessed of the same endowments, beset by the same frailties and hedged in by the same limitations. There is no evidence that the human being has altered much in the course of recorded history, certainly none that he has grown in intellectual stature or emotional maturity. The Bible is still the fullest measure of man’s nature. Aeschylus and Shakespeare still the best textbooks of psychology and sociology, Socrates and St Thomas Aquinas still the high-water marks of human intellect.” (Pg. 366)
  
• 
  Nicole

  While the specific examples are sometimes quaintly outdated, the general themes are still relevant.
  
  And what would Drucker, supporter of writing and oration college courses, say about business school requirements today?
• 
  Susie

  Yes, yes, Drucker is brilliant and a management classic, but this book was drier than a sawdust sandwich and made me want to clean out my refrigerator in procrastination.
• 
  Heather

  As IF I actually read this. Last week of grad school classes. :throws hands up: I skimmed enough to write my paper. #senioritis
• 
  Yoly

  TL;DR; Good book, I will read the unabridged version at some point.
  
  I bought this audiobook when I first subscribed to Audible back in 2001 but for some reason, I never listened to it. I’ve been going through my library in order to get to those books that I have forgotten about, and since I was looking for a quick read, I thought this would be a good one to pick up today.
  
  This audiobook feels like a series of bullet points on a PowerPoint, but I found most of the things he said to be kind of important, so I went to Amazon to search for the e-book because I wanted a book to highlight some of the things mentioned, and noticed that it says it’s 420 pages long. The audiobook is 1 hour 30 minutes, so that means I got an abridged audiobook (I was young and stupid). So, I’ll rate it as such, I won’t say that I wish he had gone into more depth or that it felt like reading a PowerPoint. Eventually I will get to the full unabridged book because I enjoyed what I listened in this one.
  
  This book was written more than 60 years ago, and while some of the things he said sounded dated, others you can still find in more modern business books.
  
  It was kind of funny how he kept mentioning men: one-man job, multiple men, no man would want, all the men, blah blah. It’s all about the men! Then I noticed it was originally published in 1954, that explains a lot 😊
  
• 
  Hongbing Hua

  In 1954, Drucker developed an epoch-making concept, Management by Objectives, which became his most important and influential idea. Under its influence, management was separated from economics, metrology, and behavioral science, becoming an independent academic discipline. What's more, Drucker's thinking promoted the establishment of the schools of business administration that can be seen in many universities.
• 
  Todd Cheng

  Other than a very male view of the organization this analysis remains timeless. Peter Drucker gave his entire life and cognitive skill to unfolding an understanding and sharing the practices of management.
• 
  Carter

  Peter Drucker's books, are earlier works, in the theory of business management. They are dated, in some sense, but the lessons taught have an eternal quality to them; many of the essentials have not changed. Recommended.
• 
  Paco Rivera

  Es libro muy completo, para todas las personas que tengan un negocio, o tenga un puesto muy importante en una empresa.
• 
  Peter Krol

  Much of this book was way over my head. But a few sections were astoundingly pertinent and helpful.
• 
  Łukasz

  Can’t believe it was written 60 years ago. Amazing.
• 
  Altaf Darzi

  Bedrock for generally forgotten management principles in a n enterprise political system
• 
  Lobna

  Old is gold!
• 
  Elliard Shimaala

  The caption on one of the monthly magazines I subscribe to reads as follows, “tons of useful stuff” and the same is true about this book. I have read several books on management but none have put the subject in a clear perspective as one.
  
  In the only you would expect him to, Drucker explores the concept of management is and how to practice it in this classic. I have now realised that management and managing are not the same things. I have also learned the role of manager and how what he does within the enterprise affects society. Drucker further reminds the reader of the importance of analysing a business enterprise holistically rather than functionally. The enterprise objectives according to him, supersede any other objectives and should be the only thing employee's efforts are directed towards. This is to be achieved through management by objectives which is as useful today as it was in 1954 when this book was published.
  
  I think this book will go on my bookshelf classic section and I will refer to it as I go along in my career. I would also recommend it to working professionals and management students. The book will act as a good base for you to understand management, the work of a manager and how these relate to the enterprise and society.
• 
  Khalid Sulami

  Here're my take-aways: Take-Aways
  
  - The rise of management as an organizational discipline arguably is the most important business development of the 20th century.
  - Large, complex organizations ultimately will fail without professional management.
  - Management principles went into creating post-World War II’s Marshall Plan.
  - Professional managers aid in planning and developing their firms’ basic missions.
  - They set objectives for employees, organize processes, communicate important information, track performance and help workers develop.
  - Effective managers relate to their superiors, subordinates and peers equally well.
  - The ideal manager is a “working boss” rather than just a “coordinator” of others’ work.
  “Knowledge workers” need managers to maximize their productivity.
  - Decision making is a manager’s stock-in-trade. Focus on their decisions’ quality, not their quantity.
  - “Managing the boss” is a critical component to every manager’s success.
  
  Summary
  
  
• 
  Vivian

  Well, I read this book because it is one of my class assignment. As my professor said "Wrote by Father of Management, this book change the Management concept at the current time", yes it did, but that's 60 years ago. Honestly I don't find it interesting as a leisure book nor informative as a text book.