I’m starting my blog on management and leadership now for two reasons.

First, my partner Mike Auzenne believes this will be a great way for us to capture my voluminous thoughts on leadership and management. Mike and I share a common passion for the practice of leadership in organizations and in the world.

We’re both West Pointers, so we come by our interest genuinely. We’ve seen a lot of leadership - some of it good, much of it venial - and some of it so brilliant and inspirational that we learned from it even though we were too young to reproduce it ourselves.

With Manager Tools attracting thousands of daily downloads while only being a couple of months old, Mike believes - and I agree - that it is good stewardship to provide additional ways for our community to interact about leadership. He also thinks that lots of readers will like what I have to say - no, what he said was that they will like reading what I have to say. Well, at least he’s half right.

The second reason is that Peter Drucker died a week ago. If you didn’t know Drucker, and have been surprised by the caliber of people mourning his passing, I hope you have taken a moment to read the encomiums, and I pray that you have either bought, or committed to buying, one of his books.

Peter Drucker was the most brilliant and insightful thinker and writer on management in the history of mankind.

I have two searing recollections of Drucker, though neither are personal in nature - I regret never having met him. The first was reading the primary insight in The Effective Executive (the finest managment book of all time). Drucker says that the most precious resource an executive must husband is his or her own time. He recommended keeping a log, and determining what one’s priorities really are.

I believe this may be the single most powerful guidance ever written about the practice of management. I can attest to it being a dazzling light of truth and revelation for hundreds of executives I have coached. Confronted with the evidence, many confident, self-assured leaders have broken down and admitted to being scared that everyone would someday discover that they didn’t know what they were doing.

I have been reading recently that some management theorists do not believe Drucker could ever have made tenure because he did not approach his study with the rigor necessary in today’s academy. This is preposterous enough to cause apoplexy. The insight about an executive’s time could not have been learned with all the analytics in the world. Those who would have denied him tenure prove thereby that they aren’t smart enough to have figure it out for themselves.

When I read this slur, I was reminded of a lovely anecdote told about Einstein. He and his wife were visiting Mt. Wilson observatory, and Mrs. Einstein asked about the purpose of a particularly complex piece of equipment. The guide told her that it was used to determine the shape of the universe. “Oh,” replied Mrs. Einstein, “my husband uses the back of an old envelope to work that out.”

Analytics work well to determine weighting criteria for algorithmic analysis of supply chain queuing problems. If they’re giving out tenure for that, as opposed to the timeless insight of identifying every executive’s most precious resource and showing how it can be mastered… I hope they feel secure in their sinecure.

The second time Drucker stunned me was when he wrote, “…it is the recipient who communicates. The so-called communicator, the person who emits the communication, does not communicate. He utters.”

Understanding those 21 words will immediately make you a better “communicator”by a quantum factor. In some future blog post, I will talk about those words’ ramifications in marketing.

To be clear, the reason I cite Drucker is simply homage. Nothing I write will ever approach his caliber. But I commit to you that when I am in my office, his picture hanging on my wall will remind me that I should reach for the stars - because even if I don’t get one, I won’t end up with a handful of mud, either. (Thanks, Mr. Burnett)

So, Mike Auzenne and Peter Drucker are the proximate causes of this effort. I consider them in the same class of people - they make me burn to be my best, everyday.

Mark Horstman
18 November
Fredericksburg, TX

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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 19th, 2005 at 2:41 am and is filed under general.

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