As mentioned in my Lifestream, I’ve started reading The Essential Drucker a few days ago.
The Essential Drucker is not an easy book to read especially in this age where management books are supposed to be simple enough to be read by managers in a single afternoon. It’s a dry read — humor and inspirational stories are usually just one or two sentences long. It is however filled with practical information regarding management. Every paragraph has a little gem of knowledge that you might feel that you could apply in your business.
In short, it’s more Art of War than In Search of Excellence.
I’m feeling lazy after hours of unlearning a good portion of my HTML/CSS knowledge so I’ll just leave you with a few choice quotes
Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. This is what organization is all about, and it is the reason that management is the critical, determining factor.
A business enterprise (or any institution) has only one true resource: people.
Asked what a business is, the typical businessman is likely to answer, “An organization to make profit.” The typical economist is likely to give the same answer. The answer is not only false, it is irrelevant.
… In fact, the concept is worse than irrelevant: it does harm.
Nonprofits used to say, We don’t pay volunteers so we cannot make demands upon them. Now they are more likely to say, Volunteers must get far greater satisfaction from their accomplishments and make a greater contribution precisely because they do not get any paycheck. The steady transformation of the volunteer from well-meaning amateur to trained, professional, unpaid staff member is the most significant development in the nonprofit sector — as well as the one with the farthest-reaching implications for tomorrow’s business.
And finally, the quote that made me stop and read the passage out loud before giggling for a minutes:
Countless sermons have been preached and printed on the ethics of business or the ethics of the businessman. Most have nothing to do with business and little to do with ethics.
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Stuff about the Lifestream progress is in my latest LiveJournal entry.
