The Definitive Drucker

Peter Drucker is, even after his death in 2005, perhaps the most important management guru of all times. Some of his famous sayings include: ‘Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things’, ‘Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work’ and ‘Don’t confuse motion with progress’. Peter Drucker is mainly known for his Socratic style: ask a question, and make sure it is the right one.

The biography ‘The Definitive Drucker’ is well-written by management consultant Elizabeth Haas Edersheim, who held extensive interviews with the guru, at that point old, bashful and yet still keen. This book will mainly be interesting to Supply Chain professionals due to Drucker’s clear views on outsourcing and the similarities between his vision and that of Toyota. For the rest, this biography provides an extremely large amount of interesting material on leadership.