Management Challenges for the 21st Century

Peter Drucker never disappoints. This time, he's got valuable lessons for the future.
Gautam Chikermane
A couple of books ago, Peter F. Drucker, the father of management, had declared that like the brilliant composer Giuseppe Verdi did at age 80, he too would continue to strive for perfection. This is what he wrote in his 1997 book, Drucker on Asia: "I resolved that if I ever reached an advanced age, I would not give up. I would strive for perfection even though, as I well knew, it would surely, always elude me." Drucker today is 10 years older than Verdi was then. And, like Verdi, he doesn't disappoint: Management Challenges for the 21st Century remains, as all his earlier 31 books, refreshingly -- and predictably -- insightful.
Of course, if you have been following the works of this master, you would have read much of what he has to offer earlier: the chapter on new paradigms of management was published in Forbes; the one on knowledge worker productivity in the California Management Review; the ones on information and managing the individual in the Harvard Business Review. There is a sound strategy of a learner behind this: "The best pilot-test for my writings, I have found, is to pre-publish sections of a forthcoming book in magazines." I might add that the one other place where you can see Drucker's forthcoming book is following his thoughts in the interviews he gives in magazines -- Wired and Inc, among others.
Book review in Outlook Money