{"id":79893,"date":"2024-03-19T12:45:27","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T16:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/?p=79893"},"modified":"2024-03-19T21:21:39","modified_gmt":"2024-03-20T01:21:39","slug":"where-peter-druckers-guidance-runs-ashore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/19\/where-peter-druckers-guidance-runs-ashore\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Peter Drucker’s Guidance Runs Ashore"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Peter F. Drucker wryly noted that the only requirement for being a leader is to have at least one follower<\/strong>. Drucker, whose observations, insights, and perspective on management theory have shaped the modern business landscape, clearly knew something about leadership. However, rather than focus on the leader’s or persons’ qualities, his guidance was aimed at how the organizations function best.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I think he saw leadership the way some describe pornography as a function of community standards: you know it when you see it<\/strong>. I also believe that Drucker correctly distinguished management as science you apply rigorously through investigation that leads to understanding and then practices, and the art of leadership is somewhat ethereal, clearly imprecise, and difficult to measure in the way the results of management can be.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While I don’t disagree with Drucker, I see leadership somewhat differently. From all that I have studied and researched, I believe that good leadership is the product of the organization’s performance, not the other way around<\/strong>. Leadership contributes to well-managed companies in essential ways, but without the resulting performance, you cannot regard the leader as successful. The organization’s success begets the leader’s. Good management is essential to effective leadership, but many companies have managed their business surprisingly well under poor leaders, at least for a while. The Enron debacle, for example, and what is going wrong at Boeing today. Enron’s leadership effectively managed to fool investors and regulators for years, and Boeing, while managing to become one of the world’s most respected names in commercial aviation, has seen its reputation diminished by misguided priorities driven by its leadership. While poor management will cause a company to fail quickly, poor leadership will lead to eventual failure. It isn’t that leadership matters less. It’s that leadership’s impact is felt and proven over time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Drucker’s humanistic suggestion that workers be viewed as assets rather than liabilities misses a critical point<\/strong>. Assets are things you own; in essence, you rent your employees. Technically, workers are liabilities, but their performance is an asset, and human potential is a critical source of capital to be employed and managed against the risks that operate in all markets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The best way to manage organizations better is to lead people more effectively<\/strong>. It may not seem cost-effective or profitable in the short run, but over time, it proves essential. You can and must manage things well, but you cannot manage people who can exercise free choice. Just look at prisoner populations. Prisoners can be managed for containment purposes, but efforts to rehabilitate or change how prisoners think are generally ineffective. People rehabilitate themselves. Effective leadership leaves in its wake a stream of inspired performance that casts ripples far and wide. Solid leadership is a steady hand on the rudder, guiding the ship toward its intended destination. Drucker may have been too focused on the engine and failed to recognize that the relationship between the captain and crew gets companies where they need to go.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter F. Drucker wryly noted that the only requirement for being a leader is to have at least one follower. Drucker, whose observations, insights, and perspective on management theory have shaped the modern business landscape, clearly knew something about leadership. However, rather than focus on the leader’s or persons’ qualities, his guidance was aimed at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":79888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cohort-reading-resources","category-leadership-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79893"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79910,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79893\/revisions\/79910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpsleadership.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}