- When you think about
Peter, he's sort of like the Babe Ruth and Ted Williams of baseball because of his longevity, his high standards, his sustained excellence. - He was a giant in his
field, a renaisannce man. He was more than I expected. More than I ever could've anticipated. He was a good man. - You've probably heard of
the four Cs of diamonds, well there are the four
Cs of Peter Drucker. And these are the values
and guiding princples that he considered
important, among others. One was competency, you have to have that. The other was character,
compassion, and community. Those are the DNA of
effective organizations and effective leaders. (gentle music) Peter Drucker was born in
Vienna, Austria in 1909. He witnessed Word War I and
the destruction that occurred, and the fear that people lived
in on a day-to-day basis. - We are influenced by our
upbringing and our youth, and his youth was filled with political and economic turmoil. The Nazis came into power, he read Hitler's book, Mein Kampf. He took it seriously. (speaking foreign language) By 1934, I believe, he
left to go to England. He was working in investment banking and he was working as a
foreign correspondent. It was that background with which he came to the United States
and when he began to write, he began to look at everything from the outside in, from society in, wanting to build a strong society, this notion of a functioning
society of organizations became very important to him. (light music) - What are the new forces in the market, the new changes that, incidentally, can be identified some major market area. - [Lawrence] Peter Drucker came to the Claremont Graduate University in 1971. He created a revolutionary
executive education program. - I think he wanted to create several generations of effective managers and teachers that are effective managers. And I think he viewed that as
the most promising mechanism for social change and good that could be. - He was a born teacher. You asked a question, you
got a long, long explanation at home, too, I said, "I
don't want all this teaching. "I just want an answer, no, no, no." - The peculiar shape of the grand piano is based on the mathematics, the geometry of the 18th century. - He would get a question
and he would talk about it for probably close to an hour. And he would bring in aspects
and, at times, you would think he's completely lost his train of thought. - There's a wonderful story, World War II, of the man who was going to be the next Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. - He's off talking about, you know, St. Augustine and the monks and then he would always bring it
back and just nail it, right at the end. - He'd give you an example from the army and he'd give you an
example from the Jesuits and he'd give you an example
of some political time way back in history. - And there's a very old
Roman law doctrine that says which from the beginning-- - But if you hung on
for three hours, whew, you'd come out with jewels
that you don't forget. - The greatest weakness of executives is that they believe that they are being paid for being bright. They are being paid for being right. - No, I think almost
all of his lectures had, as a primary takeaway, a moral obligation. The moral obligation of management to empower and contribute. - I think that is a part
of the genius of Drucker, that he gets you thinking about issues. He throws out things. Like management as a liberal art. The practice of management,
which really did quotify the practice of men,
he just threw that out. Well, it turns out that there's
a whole lot behind that. It's true. He starts you thinking. - One of the, I think,
important insights of Peter's was his recognition that
management is a liberal art, that it's not simply learning
how to do productivity or how to do marketing, but
the really effective leader needs to understand psychology, needs to understand religion,
needs to understand science. The whole series of what
make up the liberal arts that inform the decision. - His view of the world is
what makes him so special. He always said, "I'm a
journalist, you know, "I'm not a management scholar." And I took that initially as
kind of tongue-in-cheek, but, he really had a very vast,
broad view of the world. - And I asked him what
the most important thing that has happened in China
the last three to five years. And he thought about five seconds. And then said, "That we now
consider owning an automobile "a necessity and not a luxury." That is what globalization means. It is not an economic event, it's a psychological phenomenon. - He was prolific. We counted 39 legitimate entries. He actually wrote two
novels during that process, but they were not successful. I look at it this way,
he was a great writer, but he was not a great novel writer. - He was a very ethical person. And the social wellbeing of the company was way above his financial standing. He was much more interested. He was outraged by the
great difference between the income of an executive and the worker. - I think he is one of the best observers I have ever met in my life. And a brilliant questioner. One time I was dealing with
an individual in business who was not a particularly
honorable person and who appeared to have
tremendous productive capability. And I was mentioning this. And I could see from his questions, I think he was quietly
thinking, are you an idiot? Like if the guy has
character flaws, that's it. That's all you need to know. - Drucker said in his 1946 book, which was the Concept of the Corporation, it came out of the GM work, that the most durable organizations had developed their people both
intellectually and morally. And that's focusing on strengths. That way, organizations really fly. Focused on strength. It's a big deal in Drucker. - Very deep for Peter because
it comes out of his past. You know, he grew up in Austria,
he saw the Nazi plotters, he saw what the Nazi
philosophies did to people, and he had a deep respect for individuals, helping individuals to grow. That was all very, very genuine. If you look at the classic economic view of production or economic activity, right, you've got machines, you've got labor, you've got land, all that. Well, people are actually the only infinitely expendable resource. So, not only is it the right thing to do in terms of helping people
grow for its own sake, but it turns out that it's a tremendous competitive advantage if you can really unleash
the power of people. - What he was really trying
to do is to develop managers so that society's
organizations could thrive so that we would not succumb to the what he called the magicians who could magically solve problems, the Hitlers and the totalitarian leaders. Freedom.
- Peter Drucker has devoted his life to
strengthening civil society. His determination has made him one of the greatest management
experts of our time. - He understood that organizations
were imperfect, at best, and, often, largely misguided. And, at the same time,
he had this sense of if you could tap into the
mission or create a mission or a purpose, a sense of focus, and then get individuals who, themselves had tremendous limitations but have one area of genius
and empower that area of genius and enable those individuals
to work constructively together toward that unified purpose, that great things could be accomplished. And, to me, that's what
this school is about. - He talked a lot about guiding principles and values of business. The faculty are constantly connecting what Peter believed was important to the topics that are on the
desk of today's executive. - [Peter] Our job is to
enable our students to learn, enable them to make knowledge effective in their own work and in their own organization. (dramatic piano music)
