Drucker - Management Challenges for the 21st Century

Where, readers may ask, is the discussion of COMPETITIVE STRATEGY, of LEADERSHIP, of CREATIVITY, of TEAMWORK, of TECHNOLOGY in a book on MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES? Where are the HOT ISSUES OF TODAY? But this is the very reason why they are not in this book. It deals exclusively with TOMORROWS Hot Issuesthe crucial, central, life-and-death issues that are certain to be the major challenges of tomorrow.

CERTAIN? Yes. For this is not a book of PREDICTIONS, not a book about the FUTURE. The challenges and issues discussed in it are already with us in every one of the developed countries and in most of the emerging ones (e.g., Korea or Turkey). They can already be identified, discussed, analyzed and prescribed for. Some people, someplace, are already working on them. But so far very few organizations do, and very few executives. Those who do work on these challenges today, and thus prepare themselves and their institutions for the new challenges, will be the leaders and dominate tomorrow. Those who wait until these challenges have indeed become hot issues are likely to fall behind, perhaps never to recover.

This book is thus a Call for Action.

These challenges are not arising out of today. THEY ARE DIFFERENT. In most cases they are at odds and incompatible with what is accepted and successful today. We live in a period of PROFOUND TRANSITIONand the changes are more radical perhaps than even those that ushered in the Second Industrial Revolution of the middle of the 19th century, or the structural changes triggered by the Great Depression and the Second World War. READING this book will upset and disturb a good many people, as WRITING it disturbed me. For in many casesfor example, in the challenges inherent in the DISAPPEARING BIRTHRATE in the developed countries, or in the challenges to the individual, and to the employing organization, discussed in the final chapter on MANAGING ONESELFthe new realities and their demands require a REVERSAL of policies that have worked well for the last century and, even more, a change in the MINDSET of organizations as well as of individuals.

This is a MANAGEMENT BOOK. It intentionally leaves out BUSINESS CHALLENGESeven very important ones such as the question of whether the EURO will displace the U.S. dollar as the worlds key currency, or what will SUCCEED the 19th centurys most successful economic inventions, the commercial bank and the investment bank. It intentionally does not concern itself with ECONOMICSeven though the basic MANAGEMENT changes (e.g., the emergence of knowledge as the economys key resource) will certainly necessitate radically new economic theory and equally radically new economic policy. The book does not concern itself with politicsnot even with such crucial questions as whether Russia can and will recover as a political, military and economic power. It sticks with MANAGEMENT ISSUES.

There are good reasons for this. The issues this book discusses, the new social, demographic and economic REALITIES, are not issues that GOVERNMENT can successfully deal with. They are issues that will have profound impact on politics; but they are not political issues. They are not issues the Free Market can deal with. They are also not issues of ECONOMIC THEORY or even of ECONOMIC POLICY. They are issues that only MANAGEMENT and the INDIVIDUAL knowledge worker, professional or executive can tackle and resolve. They are surely going to be debated in the domestic politics of every developed and every emerging country. But their resolution will have to take place within the individual organization and will have to be worked out by the individual organizations MANAGEMENTand by every single individual knowledge worker (and especially by every single executive) within the organization.

A great many of these organizations will, of course, be businesses. And a great many of the individual knowledge workers affected by these challenges will be employees of business or working with business. Yet this is a MANAGEMENT book rather than a BUSINESS management book. The challenges it presents affect ALL organizations of todays society. In fact, some of them will affect nonbusinesses even more, if only because a good many nonbusiness organizationsthe university, for instance, or the hospital, let alone the government agencyare more rigid and less flexible than businesses are, and far more deeply rooted in the concepts, the assumptions, the policies of yesterday or even, as are universities, in the assumptions of the day before yesterday (i.e., of the 19th century).

How to use the book? I suggest you read a chapter at a timethey are long chapters. And then first ask: What do these issues, these challenges MEAN for our organization and for me as a knowledge worker, a professional, an executive? Once you have thought this through, ask: What ACTION should our organization and I, the individual knowledge worker and/or executive, take to make the challenges of this chapter into OPPORTUNITIES for our organization and me?

AND THEN GO TO WORK!

Peter F Drucker
Claremont, California
New Years Day 1999