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www.DruckerInstitute.com
From the Archives
Sarah Lawrence College’s 1940
reference check on Peter
Drucker’s teaching ability
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High school students from
Japan tackle Drucker’s Five
Most Important Questions
“I don’t predict. I just look out the window and see what’s visible but not yet seen.”
– Peter F. Drucker
the window
Sept-Oct 2011
Letter from Claremont
In his 1957 book Landmarks of
Tomorrow, Peter Drucker described an
advance that was rapidly spreading to the
farthest reaches of the globe. “The radio,”
Drucker wrote, “brings the whole world
with all its ideas, its excitement, its dreams
into the most remote hamlet.”
More than half a century later—in an
age of Google, Facebook and Twitter—the
radio is still bringing a plethora of ideas and
excitement to listeners (though people may
now tune in over multiple platforms).
And so it is that last May we decided
to launch “Drucker on the Dial,” a monthly
interview program framed around Drucker’s
teachings.
The show is hosted by Phalana Tiller,
who in addition to serving as the Drucker
Institute’s communications manager is also
an award-winning actress. Earlier in her
career, Phalana worked as a DJ at WTJU, a
public radio station in Virginia, and as a VJ
on MTV-2 in the late 1990s. (Who says
we’re all nerds?)
“Drucker on the Dial” is distributed for
free through the Public Radio Exchange, an
online marketplace for programming. To
date, two small stations have signed up for
the show: KFOK in Georgetown, Calif., and
KGLP in Gallup, N.M.
But we have little doubt that more will
soon come on board. After all, how can they
resist the guests that Phalana is able to
attract? Among them so far: the CEOs of
Deloitte and the Red Cross, leading
management thinkers like Roger Martin and
even novelist Richard Ford (about an
anthology on work that he edited).
Sound cool? If so, please urge your
local public radio station to air “Drucker on
the Dial,” where, as Phalana says (in a tone
more mellifluous than we could ever
muster), “timely issues meet timeless
principles.”
Rick Wartzman and Zach First
Executive Director and Managing Director
PC RIP?: “Is HP’s possible
abandonment of the PC
good business?”
The most popular Dx post in the past 30 days
The Drucker Institute is an entity of Claremont Graduate University, located at 1021 North Dartmouth Avenue, Claremont, California
91711.
p. 2 p. 2
Local Links
How people around the world are bettering their
communities by applying Peter Drucker’s ideas
“I thought management meant station to pick it up.
something I would do to other people…
Now I know I have to start
by managing myself.”
So said Eriko, a high
school junior from Tokyo
and a recent participant in
Drucker for Future Leaders
(DFL), the Drucker
Institute’s management
and leadership training
program for teens.
Eriko and 20 other students from the
Waseda Prep School in Japan recently
spent a week in Claremont learning and
applying lessons drawn from The Effective
Executive; Management: Tasks,
Responsibilities, Practices; “Managing
Oneself”; and other classic Drucker texts.
As part of the DFL program, each
student designed and implemented a self-management
plan based on Drucker’s “Five
Most Important Questions”: What is my
mission? Who is my customer? What does
the customer value? What are my results?
What is my plan?
As part of their work,
the students also
developed community
service projects to
implement back home.
Makoto, a 10th grader,
devised a plan to improve
the organization and
performance of the sports
clubs at his school. “I didn’t think I could
have an impact,” he said. “The
management skills I learned will allow me
to solve a problem I thought was too big.”
Fumiko Kondo, a Waseda Prep teacher,
explained that Japanese students are
usually eager to gain skill and knowledge
but sometimes hesitate to put ideas into
practice. DFL, she said, provided an
“opportunity to satisfy their curiosity and
force them to take action.”
The Drucker Institute’s Lawrence
Greenspun with Waseda Prep students
Check out our new monthly radio
show, “Drucker on the Dial,”
where timely issues meet
timeless principles. And please
urge your local public radio
The Drucker Institute’s
Rick Wartzman writes a
column for Bloomberg
Businessweek online that
ties Peter Drucker’s work
to today’s headlines.
Read the latest.
From the
Archives
This time of year Claremont is buzzing
with new and returning students. There are
also new professors who are getting
acclimated to their surroundings. It’s easy
to forget that Peter Drucker was once a new
professor himself.
Two years after arriving in the United
States from England, where he had worked
at a London bank, Drucker decided to shift
gears and enter the world of academia.
Sarah Lawrence College was among
the first schools to which Drucker applied.
In this 1940 letter, the then-president of
Sarah Lawrence, Constance Warren, asked
a University of Virginia colleague about
Drucker’s teaching abilities. (Drucker had
recently given a talk at Virginia.)
“We found Mr. Drucker very
stimulating indeed and think his point of
view would be an excellent one to have on
the faculty,” Warren said. However, she
was clearly apprehensive, and continued, “I
have no means of finding out anything
about his teaching ability.”
Warren was confident that Drucker
knew the material but concerned whether
he could make it “simple enough for
intelligent beginners.”
Warren's fears were quickly put to rest,
as Drucker proved more than adequate in
the classroom. He went on to teach part-time
at Sarah Lawrence until 1942, and
then full time for another 60 years at
Bennington College, New York University
and Claremont Graduate University, winning
fame for his spellbinding lectures.
The Drucker Institute is an affiliate of the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management.
