‘The Daily Drucker’ edited by Joseph A Maciarello, published by Collins

This 2004 book has been re-released after the death of the great man and, because of my soft spot for his work, I decided to review its relevance to today’s challenges.  The rather gimmicky format provides readers with a one page gem from Drucker’s work for every day of the year.  I am not sure how you are supposed to read it but I dipped in over a period of two weeks while on holiday and found that Drucker usually provides something to make you think and question what you do.

You can’t fail to be impressed by the sheer scale of what he has written; every page quotes the source of his wisdom and you realise just how amazing his output was.  The other noticeable feature is how often he was ahead of his time, forecasting trends that are now part of our business culture.  It is true that some of his writings are statements of the blindingly obvious but that may be because it was him, and the other early management gurus, that made them obvious.

It is difficult to sum up 366 (one for leap year) pages of wisdom so instead I quote some of my favourites - quite a few directed towards management learning - which should give you an idea of the style and scope coverage:
• Profit is the only source of future jobs
• Businesses fail when they don’t realise what represents value to the customer
• Training via the Internet requires a complete redesign of the learning process (glad MTP got that one right!)
• The first sign of business decline is when you cannot retain high calibre people
• Knowledge workers will fail unless continuous learning is brought into their work
• Management courses for inexperienced people are a waste of time
• Cost never drift down so cost prevention is a never ending task
• Beware diversification; the less complex a business, the fewer things can go wrong
• Move executives over 60 years old away from executive decisions, into advisory and development roles (glad MTP got that one right too!!)
• Be careful not to make decisions until you have to
• For acquisitions to succeed, the two companies must share a common core of unity

This book is well worth having in your office and on your coffee table, to keep you thinking about the issues that determine success  or failure in your business.  My only criticism is the decision to put an ‘action point’ at the end of each page; this comes across as contrived and unnecessary.  From Drucker’s words of wisdom, we should all be capable of deciding what action to take.

Buy the book;
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Daily-Drucker-Insight-Motivation/dp/0062089242/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333445605&sr=1-1