Father of modern management, social commentator, and preeminent business philosopher, Peter F. Drucker has been analyzing economics and society for more than sixty years. Now for readers everywhere who are concerned with the ways that management practices and principles affect the performance of the organization, the individual, and society, there is The Essential Drucker -- an invaluable compilation of management essentials from the works of a management legend.

Containing twenty-six selections, The Essential Drucker covers the basic principles and concerns of management and its problems, challenges, and opportunities, giving managers, executives, and professionals the tools to perform the tasks that the economy and society of tomorrow will demand of them.

Average Customer Review: ( 50 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.

As great as his ideas about management are, his observations about how to think are even more valuable. The book contains no material from his autobiography, Adventures of a Bystander. You cannot hope to fully appreciate this material until you read that book.

What the book does contain is a fairly easy to follow series of 26 excerpts from the ten books, organized into three sections: Management, Individual, and Society. These books date back to 1954, so you get an overview of part of his work over the last 47 years. This overview will mainly be valuable to managers who have read very little Drucker, since there is essentially no new material in the book. The excerpts are also not connected by any transitions, so there is no additional perspective available from the book's organization.

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.

If you are not familiar with Professor Drucker, he is generally considered to be the first person to think systematically about what management is and needs to become. He was also the first to identify that we were moving into a knowledge-based society where the focus of work and the ways that work is organized would have to be totally transformed. His definition of what a business must do is the most often quoted one around: "The purpose of a business is to create a customer." Innovation and marketing are the prime tasks. The book is especially deep in references to his seminal thinking on how to innovate and to operate entrepreneurial businesses. He was also the first twentieth century thinker to see the connection between management of for profit and nonprofit organizations, and that both types of organizations are needed in growing numbers for a sound society. This book is also deeply presents his thinking about the social responsibility of business.

I am still impressed by how substantial his imprint is on all management books that I read. Whether or not Professor Drucker is cited, credited, or admired in these books, almost all of them are simply restatements or elaborations on his fundamental concepts. I hope this edition of his work will help extend his influence further into the future with new generations of executives and managers.

After you finish reading these landmark ideas, I suggest that you think about one element of the book from the individual section. What values do you want to bring to your work? Are you succeeding? If yes, congratulations! How can you accomplish more? If not, what can you change to make those values come to life?

Use your work as a canvas upon which to paint a better world, as Professor Drucker has!

57 of 59 found the following review helpful:

An excellent compilation of Drucker's best works. A must read for every manager.Dec 28, 2005
By Avinash Sharma "MBA, M.S., Knowledge Worker"
The late Peter F. Drucker invented the discipline that we know as Management. This book is an excellent compilation of his best works, written over six decades and published in journals, magazines and over 30 books.
I am amazed at the breadth and depth of this compilation. It includes several topics (categorized in sections for Management, The Individual and Society). In the first few chapters Drucker defines management through its tasks and states that "there is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer" (page 20). In the other chapters you will learn Management by Objectives (MBO), the process of making effective decisions, the importance of focusing on contributions and results, get introduced to the "knowledge worker" (page 304), a term Drucker created in the 60s, and learn about the "post-capitalist society" with knowledge as the central resource (page 288). This book has five chapters on Innovation & Entrepreneurship. And more.
While there is a lot of wisdom in each chapter, I will share below my thoughts from 4 chapters that were originally published in "The Effective Executive" (1966):
In Chapter 13: Effectiveness must be Learned, Drucker explains the diferrence between efficiency and effectiveness - efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things. For manual work, efficiency was enough. In today's world, the center of gravity has shifted from the manual worker to the "knowledge worker". For knowledge work, effectiveness is more important than efficiency.
An executive is ... a knowledge worker who is ... responsible for contributions (decisions, actions) ... that have significant impact on ... performance and results of the whole organization (derived from Chapter 13).
In Chapter 14: Focus on Contribution, Drucker stresses the importance of focusing outward, on contributions and results; as opposed to downward, on efforts. He then discusses the four basic requirements of effective human relations - communication, teamwork, self-development and development of others.
In Chapter 16: Know Your Time, Drucker explains time-diagnosis with questions for the executive:
a. What would happen if this were not done at all?
b. Which activities could be done by somebody else just as well, if not better?
c. (ask others) What do I do that wastes your time without contributing to your effectiveness?
Drucker then explains the identification of time wasters caused by - a lack of system, overstaffing, bad organization structure and malfunction in information. He also states that "Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed".
In Chapter 17: Effective Decisions, Drucker explains the decision process in five steps:
a. Determine whether the problem is generic or unique
b. Specify the objectives of the decision and the conditions it needs to satisfy
c. Determine the right solution that will satisfy the specifications and conditions
d. Convert the decision into action
e. Build a feedback process to compare results with expectations
He states that "No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone's work assignment and responsibility. Until then, there are only good intentions". He then explains the importance of creating disagreement, rather than consensus. He states that disagreement provides alternatives and stimulates imagination and that "The first rule in decision making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement".
This book is an excellent introduction to management. As you may have guessed from the quotes, it contains many of the most famous Druckerisms. I recommend this book as a must read to every manager and anybody interested in management.

41 of 43 found the following review helpful:

Compendium of 60 Yrs. of Managerial Research/ReflectionJun 30, 2001
By rodboomboom
There probably does not exist a major league manager who has not been influenced by Drucker. This is a compilation of his books spanning his career thus far on the topic of management.

Drucker is always tight in his style and words with thoughts that at first make one sit up and take notice.

The first chapter sets the tone for the rest. This quote says it all: "Actually, waht is our business? is almost always a difficult question and the right answer is usually anything but obvious. The answer to the question, What is our business? is the first responsibility of top management. That business purpose and business mission are so rarely given adequate thought is perhaps the single most important cause of business frustration and business failure."

To his vast experience and knowledge, it is so refreshing to here him denounce profitability as a myth for the purpose of any business. He calls it irrelevant. Of the highest relevancy for Drucker are two basic functions: makerting and innovation.

Hurray, say all the marketing types! Wish the top management could join in the understanding.

Drucker's views are wide open to reality searching with broad vision over the world panorama. This book is exceptional collection of some of Drucker's best writing. Well chosen for their punch and coverage of such a vital, modern topic as management, this book will serve practioners as well as those who desire an understanding of the topic.

59 of 64 found the following review helpful:

The "Best of" Is Not EnoughNov 16, 2001
By Bradley A. Swope
REVIEW: While I only rated this book 4 stars, keep in mind that this is a relative rating and that Peter Drucker's primary competition is himself. Drucker's books are always full of great thinking and great content, but I'm not sure that this book is for everyone interested in Peter Drucker (at least it's not one that I'd recommend first). First of all, the idea of distilling Drucker's work into a single book of material is hard for me to accept because he has so much great material that was already written fairly concisely (though there some overlap in his works). Does having the Essential Drucker mean you can read it and skip the original books? Certainly not if your serious about becoming a more effective person/executive. It is sort of like picking one Shakespeare or one Mozart, you'll get a good piece of work, but you're still missing a whole lot of important stuff.

Anyway, I think there is a couple situations for which this book will be especially useful. First, it may be most valuable to people (like me) who have read a number of Drucker's books. In essence, the Essential Drucker can act as a short refresher on many of Drucker's important concepts without having to go back and reread all of the original books. For this purpose the book was highly valuable to me. Also, the book may be valuable to those that have read a little Drucker and want to read more, but are unsure which of his many books to start with. Since the introduction lists the book that each chapter was originally published in, you can easy go to the source to expand upon something that interests you. However, for the reader that's fairly new to Drucker, why not go to the source and read something like Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, The Practice of Management, or The Effective Executive. No matter what you choose you'll get great content related to the theory and practice of management. A final comment, an interesting approach to reading the Essential Drucker would be to read each chapter and then guess what year the chapter was written. In many cases, I think the answer will surprise.

STRENGTHS: As always, you get great content from one of the world's great thinkers on management, organization, and society. His writing is very concise, to-the-point, and sprinkled with real life examples.

WEAKNESSES: Some people are put-off by his very matter-of-fact writing style. He knows when he's right and rarely hedges his statements. Also, those needing fancy diagrams and graphics to learn material will be put off, because there are none.

WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK: For the reasons stated above, I'm recommending this book mainly to those who are interested in Drucker's management writings and who are already familiar with some of them. It makes a great refresher.

ALSO CONSIDER: Other major works by Drucker including, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, The Practice of Management, and The Effective Executive.

45 of 53 found the following review helpful:

Like trying to do Quantum Physics while reading NewtonApr 25, 2007
By C. Daley III
I only made it 115 pages into the book before I had to put it down. In fairness, I'm a formally trained MBA (masters in business administration) so this experience should not be considered representative, but it does mean that I can offer a substantive and critical review of the compilation. I have two major points: one on accuracy and one on style

To his credit, Drucker could easily be considered the most influential source on management of the 20th century. Many of the basic ideas he offers are valuable and if a reader does not have any formal background in management, his book is accessible and full of extremely illustrative examples. The structure flows naturally and could be an excellent learning tool or primer.

The problem with Drucker is he was an influential source of the **20th** century and the compilation occurred without any substantial updating. One example in particular is on page 107 where Drucker offers, "Companies typically measure their proposed capital appropriations by... four yardsticks: return on investment, payback period, cash flow, and discounted present value. But we have known... since the early 1930s... that none of those is the right method... a company needs to look at all four." While this may have been a cutting edge approach in 1930 (and while it is still a common sentiment among managers whose education dates to the 50s and 60s), modern management theory recognizes that NPV *actually is* the one and only right method. This is one of a number of instances where actual errors are present. Indeed, there are additional instances where his perspective seems to conflict with a modern management education, but where there is no clear cut right answer.

The second point I would like to make is that there are really two basic ways to teach a concept. One is to offer plentiful examples so that a reader can draw conclusions and/or hopefully find one or more situations with similarities to each problem they face (inductive). The other is to offer a structured and unified theory that is less precise in its examples, but can be easily applied to situations that are dissimilar to those presented (deductive). Drucker writes in the inductive style, with plentiful examples. As a result, he doesn't offer a condensed nugget of theory that one can take away to apply to seemingly novel situations. If a reader isn't an expert on management, this isn't a problem and, in fact, the structure improves the learning process. If a reader has some structure and background, it reduces the value of the read.

All together, the book offers a number of great concepts and makes an illustrative primer to management (encouraged read for the untrained, 5 stars). That being said, the book and much of its content is out of date (all readers beware, 2 stars) and the style lacks the "ah hah" moments that might be found in a denser and more theory focused text (advanced readers strongly warned, 2 stars).

See all 50 customer reviews on Amazon.com