Peter Drucker Will Make You Angry
For anyone who took management courses, in college or as part of some professional development track, the name Peter Drucker should ring a huge bell. He’s been referred to as “the founder of modern management”, coined the term “knowledge worker”, and even prophesied the marginalization of the blue collar worker.
And to someone who’s spent the better part of their career fighting sclerotic management practices that were ostensibly based on his work, Peter Drucker’s Post Capitalist Society makes for some downright enraging reading.
See, Drucker is held up as the ideal management consultant. A thinker who was hired by the largest car manufacturer of the time, General Motors. A thinker who’s two year study resulted in Concept of the Corporation. It’s been considered one of the first books on the intricacies of corporate work. He even had some suggestions on how GM could improve themselves, but they were ignored. When he took the same suggestions to Japan, they were embraced and Japanese businesses leapfrogged American businesses.
In the second half of the 20th century, he was the consultant’s consultant, the business equivalent of the wandering gunslinger. The legend of Drucker still looms large in certain boardrooms and age-brackets.
But Post Capitalist Society, published in 1993, seems to have been ignored by the same people who profess to follow and understand his work. Here’s a few choice bits from the book, to give you a sense of what I mean.
“In knowledge work…the machine serves the worker. The task is not given; it has to be determined” pg 85
“[w]ork on improving any job or task begins with the people actually doing the work.” pg 91
“In knowledge and service work, partnership with the responsible worker is the only way to improve productivity. Nothing else works at all” pg 92
And yet, we still have managers telling their employees what to do? And how many employees have quit because their manager, who has no idea how to do their job, tells them ‘they aren’t hitting their metrics’? And how do you think those manager’s feel? Given strange KPIs and odd measures of success from executives, who have no idea what the reality is ‘on the ground’ and expected to churn out success? And what about those executives? Being told that these KPIs are ‘industry standard’, whatever that means, even when they see all the issues of ‘working towards a measure’?
If it wasn’t so damn depressing, it’d be nauseating.
In the book, Drucker proposed three types of teams:
Type 1: work in the team, but not as a team.
An example would be a sports team. Each player is expected to respond to the situation as it occurs but following a plan or playbook.
Type 2: work as a team with fixed roles but with a leader.
An example would be a symphony. Each player follows their copy of the music, but responds to the direction of the conductor
Type 3: work as a team with loose roles.
An example would be a jazz trio where the players respond to each other.
“The three types of teams cannot be mixed” pg 88
“This is particularly true with respect to any change in the flow of information” pg 88
Type 1 teams get their information from the situation, Type 2 from the leader, and Type 3 from each other. Type 1 teams are the weakest and Type 3s, the strongest.
So, when a Type 3 team runs into a manager who wants to micromanage, do they turn into a Type 2? Or do they just fall apart and turn into gnarly scar tissue in the workflow?
That’s a rhetorical question but I’ve only seen the latter. And pointing out the issue, when you’re an employee and not a manager, is heresy. And if you are a manager, you’re meddling in someone else’s fiefdom.
It’s enough to make you rip your hair out!
But it’s not all gloom and doom. Drucker offers a way forward.
“In the traditional organization, most of the people called ‘managers’ do not actually manage; they relay orders downward and information upward. When information becomes available, they become redundant.” pg 107
Transparency and information sharing cuts down on these interstitial managers who do more harm than good. It also frees up those people who were managers to tackle larger, more complex problems.
“The knowledge-based organization…has to assume that superiors do not know the job of their subordinates…Conductors do not know how the oboe does its work, but they know what an oboe should contribute” pg 107
Trust the team. Focus on the outcomes. Stop micromanaging.
“Historically, community was fate. In the post-capitalist society and polity, community has to become commitment” pg 178
We used to just look out for our neighbors, because they were physically near us. Now, we need to make the commitment look out for everyone, because physical proximity doesn’t define our community. We define our community.
If you get a chance, find a nice used copy of the book and give it a read. Heck, see if you can get a copy from the library. Or a PDF. Whatever you need to do.
Just read it. Let it simmer. Re-read it. Take notes this time.
And let it make you angry enough to change things.
