The Most Pressing Task

We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change.  And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.
—    Peter F. Drucker
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On This Day In:
2018	Seek A Clear View
2017	Living With Myself
2016	Still Looking In Mirrors?
2015	Fear No Evil
2014	And Nothing Can Be As Tragic As…
2013	Your Tax Dollars At Work
2012	Historically Unacceptable
2011	Niners Are NFC West Division Champions!!
	The Essence Of Leadership

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VOTE – We Need A Wave

People don’t seem to realize that doing what’s right is no guarantee against misfortune.
—    William McFee
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
—    Peter Drucker
[In 2016, #IncompetentDonald lost the popular vote by over 3 million votes.  It wasn’t enough…  Make a difference…  America needs your vote in November!   —    KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2017	Soothe, Inspire And Recharge
2016	Aren’t We?
2015	Cold Embrace
2014	Delightful
2013	Apprenticeship
2012	Curtain Rods
2011	A Living Force
2010	BART Rides – A Tipping Point

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…And With It Civilization

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
—    Peter F. Drucker
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On This Day In:
2016	Just Like My Mother
2015	All Omissions Are Mine
2014	Precise Order
2013	Uh, No. Not Really…
	Deep Regions
2012	A Pre-Valentine’s Day Message
2011	Easy Like Sunday Morning
	May I Have A Little More, Please…
2010	Valleys and Peaks

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What They Don’t Teach You At School

More and more people in the workforce — and most knowledge workers — will have to MANAGE THEMSELVES.  They will have to place themselves where they can make the greatest contribution; they will have to learn to develop themselves.  They will have to learn to stay young and mentally alive during a fifty-year working life.  They will have to learn how and when to change what they do, how they do it and when they do it.
Knowledge workers are likely to outlive their employing organization.  …  But the average life expectancy of a successful business is only thirty years — and in a period of great turbulence such as the one we are living in, it is unlikely to be even that long.
—    Peter F. Drucker
From his book: “Management Challenges for the 21st Century“
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On This Day In:
2014	Still Trying To Die (5)
2013	Honest Doubt
2012	Choice
2011	Ownership Of Thought

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Efficiently Useless

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
—    Peter Drucker
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What This Place Needs Is Another Theory

We need a theory of economic dynamics in addition to the theory of equilibrium, which is all we have now.  We need a theoretical understanding of technological innovation as an economic event and its integration into economic theory and economic policy.  We need a model of the world economy and the domestic economy.  Finally we need a theory of microeconomic behaviour, that is, of the behavior of the actors — the “organisms” — of the economy.  For it is the microeconomy, in the end, that produces economic results, goods and services, jobs and incomes.
—    Peter F. Drucker
From his book:  “The Age Of Discontinuity“
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Why Change?

…In getting rid of yesterday.  But business does reasonably well in this area.  Businessmen are just as sentimental about yesterday as bureaucrats.  They are just as reluctant to abandon anything.  They are just as likely to respond to the failure of a product or program by doubling the efforts invested in it.  But they are, fortunately, unable to indulge freely in their predilections.  They stand under an objective discipline, the discipline of the market.  They have an objective outside measurement, profitability.  And so they are forced (much to their chagrin) to slough off the unsuccessful and unproductive sooner or later.
—    Peter F. Drucker
From his book:  “The Age Of Discontinuity“
[Actually, it is only when the marginal cost of continuing to do something is “far” greater than the cost of AND benefit from change that business will change.  Business executives continue obsolete products and processes because they “believe” the historical process and its costs are understood and, therefore, manageable.   —    KMAB]
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Achievement

But there is one thing government cannot provide: the individual’s sense of achievement.
Yet this is the essential element of development.  What is needed in this world today is not primarily wealth.  It is vision.  It is the individual’s conviction that there is opportunity, energy, purpose to his society, rather than problems, inertia, and hopelessness.
—  Peter F. Drucker
From his book:  “The Age Of Discontinuity“
[It always comes back to HOPE and PRIDE.  —  KMAB]
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Fascinating Discontinuity

Yesterday, I finished “The Age of Discontinuity” by Peter F. Drucker (1969©).  This book took me almost two months to complete because it is so overwhelming.  I found I could only read a few dozen pages at most before I had to stop, pause and think about what Drucker was saying.  It is almost literally one of Bacon’s few books “to be chewed and digested.”
It’s important to remember this work was penned in the late 1960’s!!  Yet, it is as fresh and descriptive today as if Drucker is sitting across a table discussing modern history with you (me).
The book seeks to review (and examine) four main “discontinuities” in our civilization: new technology, the world’s economy, the “political matrix of social and economic life”, and (most importantly) changes in knowledge (and their effects on teaching, learning, labor, work and politics).
Here is a sampling of quotes to illustrate the power of his ideas: (on American pluralism) – …a pluralist society guarantees freedom from domination by any single group.  …  In fact, the danger in pluralism, as history teaches, is not domination by this or that interest group; it is collapse into indecision and into a stalemate of competing “countervailing powers.”
(On knowledge) – This demand, in turn reflects the basic fact that knowledge has become productive.  The systematic and purposeful acquisition of information and its systematic application, rather than “science” or “technology,” are emerging as the new foundation for work, productivity, and effort throughout this world.  (Sounds like the prediction of the coming of Google!)
Knowledge work does not lead to a “disappearance of work.” …Knowledge work, like all productive work, creates its own demand.  And the demand is apparently unlimited.
(On educational and leadership testing) – No one test can possibly identify today who will be leadership material twenty years later.  For we do not and cannot know what will be needed twenty years hence.
My copy of this book is the hardbound version and roughly 400 pages.   I would estimate I have well over 50 side notes scribbled on the pages and probably a good quarter of the book hi-lighted.  This is certainly a work I will return to again – perhaps next time to try to swallow whole, but certainly to nibble away at again and again as its digestion helps me grow.
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