is an affiliate of the drucker school of management
The first time A. G. Lafley came
to Claremont to meet with Peter
Drucker, Lafley was spearheading
strategies for Procter & Gamble’s
North American region and the
company’s new global beauty
business.
The two men had arranged to
talk for an hour. Instead, Lafley has
recalled, “ we talked for four hours. It
was like drinking from a fire hose.”
A decade later, it was Lafley’s
turn to blast the fire hose.
Now serving as P& G’s chairman
— after a hugely successful nine-year
run as CEO— Lafley worked
with the Drucker Institute to convene
a select group of corporate
executives, academics and social-sector
leaders to continue the
conversation that he had started
with Drucker. ( After that first meeting
in 1999, Lafley returned to Claremont
each year to seek Drucker’s counsel
until Drucker died in 2005.)
The intimate event drew 32
select participants. In addition to the
Drucker School’s Ira Jackson, Jean
Lipman- Blumen and Vijay Sathe,
attendees included: Intuit founder
Scott Cook; Teach for America
founder and CEO Wendy Kopp;
Costco CEO Jim Sinegal; Mattel CEO
Bob Eckert; Feeding America CEO
Vicki Escarra; professors Rosabeth
Moss Kanter ( Harvard Business
School), Warren Bennis ( USC) and
Jeffrey Pfeffer ( Stanford Business
School); and Rotman School of
Management Dean Roger Martin.
Much of the dialogue during the
forum centered on how organizations
across all sectors can be more
socially responsible— a point that
caught the attention of Harvard
Business Review editor Ellen
Peebles. In a posting on HBR’s
website following the event, Peebles
remarked that most conversations
Rick Wartzman, executive director of
the Drucker Institute, writes a bimonthly
column for BusinessWeek online that ties
Peter Drucker’s work to today’s headlines.
For a list of all of his columns, click here.
Rick’s recent “ Drucker Difference” columns:
• Trust: Effective Managers Make It a Priority Oct 16, 2009
• An Enthusiastic Thumb’s Up for Netflix Oct 2, 2009
• 10 Management Lessons from Lehman’s Demise Sept 18, 2009
• Japan: Rethinking Lifetime Employment Sept 4, 2009
Letter from Claremont
“ The Drucker Difference” on BusinessWeek. com
Drucker Society Spotlight
How Drucker Societies worldwide are
advancing ethical leadership and effective
management.
Drucker Centennial events, honoring
Peter Drucker’s enduring contributions, are
taking place from Sao Paolo to Seoul, from
Vienna to Tokyo. But one of the most
inspiring tributes to Drucker’s legacy is
unfolding in the same small town that he
called home for more than 30 years.
Here in Claremont, a dedicated cadre
of MBA students recently formed the
Drucker Society of the Drucker School.
Members are already delivering the
Drucker- in- High- Schools program at
Claremont High. The program guides
Continued on the next page Continued on the next page
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THE WINDOW “ I don’t predict. I just look out the window and see what’s visible but not yet seen.”
— Peter F. Drucker
The newsletter of the Drucker Institute www. druckerinstitute. com Nov/ Dec 2009
is an affiliate of the drucker school of management
around social responsibility are “ vague and high- minded.”
But at the Drucker forum, she said, “ I came away convinced that key business
leaders are, in fact, actually trying to make the world a better place… Participants
spoke fervently of a renewed passion for purpose and values, a sense of
responsibility to local and global community, and of a new generation entering the
workplace with what appears to be a level of desire to serve and give back to a
degree we haven’t seen since the 1930s and 1940s.”
“ Maybe I’m naïve,” Peebles added. “ But socially responsible ideas seem to be
penetrating business conversations in a way that feels earnest and even game-changing.”
We don’t want to be naïve, either. But it was hard to come away from the
forum without the feeling that Drucker’s ideals are more alive than ever— and in
the corner office, no less.
Rick Wartzman and Zach First
Executive Director and Managing Director
Coming to Southern California,
Nov. 2- 8: Drucker Centennial Week.
Learn more at www. Drucker100. com.
In 1994, The Economist took a shot
at Peter Drucker. “ Having started as a
fan of giant corporations,” it said, “ he
now praises small firms; having helped
to train generations of middle-managers,
he now praises delayering.”
In a rejoinder to the editor of the
magazine, Drucker pointed out that, in
fact, he was never a “ fan” of corporate
giants. Rather, he’d concluded after
studying General Motors in the 1940s
that “ big businesses
need to be
decentralized as much
as possible to be able
to perform.”
Therefore, he
explained, he’d always
advocated smallness
rather than bigness.
One person who
didn’t need convincing
of that was James
Vardaman. In this
1987 letter to The
Wall Street Journal,
Vardaman praised
Drucker for the guidance he provided his
small forest management company in
the 1970s.
Drucker “ spoke directly to our
problems and helped us through the
period of extraordinary growth that sinks
many companies,” Vardaman wrote. “ He
gave us, not techniques, but
understanding.”
Vardaman’s Mississippi- based
company enjoyed a prosperous 50- year
run, and he
subsequently wrote
essays that applied
Drucker’s concept
of the knowledge
worker to forestry
management.
Although
Drucker is best
known for his work
with General
Electric, IBM and
other titans, he
never sacrificed his
ability to think
small.
students in using some of Drucker’s
basic management principles to
design, implement and assess their
own community- service projects.
The students also learn the
practices Drucker laid out in his
classic Harvard Business Review
article, “ Managing Oneself,” helping
put them on a firmer path to college.
Richard O’Neill, a teacher at
Claremont High and a former student
of Drucker’s, has watched his class
“ see things with the rare clarity that
Peter wrought for me.”
Jeniffer Bobadilla, a first- year
MBA student and president of the
Society, has helped the Claremont
students shape a toy and food drive,
a recycling program and an “ adopt a
family for the holidays” initiative.
Asked what she’s taken from
the program, one of the Claremont
students wrote, “ You can’t just do
good. You have to do good well”—
words that serve as a perfect
testament to Drucker’s lasting
impact.
Society Spotlight, cont’d
Letter from Claremont, cont’d
The newsletter of the Drucker Institute www. druckerinstitute. com Nov/ Dec 2009
FROM THE ARCHIVES
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