I am a creative by nature not a manager, but my job requires that I have management skills. When I took on my role as Art Director and strapped on my management hat, a friend gave me a copy of The Daily Drucker. After a few years of working together, he knew it would be management tips I could digest.
Peter Drucker was one of the leading big thinkers on management, and has helped people like former General Electric CEO Jack Welch. Drucker published 39 books and penned a regular column in the Wall Street Journal for 20 years, among many other notable career successes. Some of his recurring themes on management style are decentralization and that employees are assets not liabilities, that taking action without thinking is the cause of failure. Finally, something close to my heart is that a company’s primary responsibility is its customers.
Great for my time-challenged days, The Daily Drucker offers up an idea a day, from January 1 through December 31. While the entries do relate as you proceed from the first to the 366th – yup it’s a leap year in this book, you could pick this book up any day of the year, open to any page and have a thought provoking read. Entries are short and concise, most don’t even fill up a complete page of the 5.5 x 7” layout. At the end of each thought is an “action point”. These action points serve as my management to do list, making me this a book I enjoy even more. I have enough things to add to my to do list when it comes to my design work, this book puts my management to do list together for me. Drucker even had enough forethought to leave some space at the bottom of each page for notes.
No matter what you do, if you have to manage in business, this book is a great read. I’ll leave you with this thought from the book, “No organization can do better than the people it has.” I would like to give a shout out here to my staff, congratulations on the successes you have had recently, you are a truly talented bunch I admire.
What I like about The Daily Drucker:
- Big idea management topics broken down into 1-2 minutes worth of reading
- Action points serve as my management to do list
- A year’s worth of enlightenment
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