The Essential Drucker Summary

Peter Drucker’s book, The Essential Drucker, provides people with basic management practices and principles. In this book Drucker helps managers understand the individuality of each worker and how to use this individuality to build a strong team that work toward a common goal to succeed. Drucker also helps managers understand a business role in society and how to manage employees in a way that helps achieve the goals of the business.
In the beginning of his book Drucker tries to determine what management is. One quote in this section that I found to be important was, “Management is about human beings. Its task is to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.” This quote is significant in terms of management principles …show more content…
A quote that I found to be meaningful in this section of the book was, “Business enterprises and public service institutions as well, are organs of society. They do not exist for their own sake but to fulfill a specific social purpose and to satisfy a specific need of a society, a community, or individuals.” This quote is meaningful in terms of management principles because it explains that companies are in business because of the people in the communities around them. A company succeeds because of a need or want that it fulfils in society. If a business does not provide something that is needed or wanted in a community, it will not succeed. Coffee shops, gas stations, restaurants, and retail stores all serve in a community where they have consumers that want what they offer. A gas station may not be successful in a community where most people walk to work and school or use public transportation and therefore not need a car but may thrive on an exit off an interstate. Without the people in the communities to purchase their goods and services there would be no business at all. The same hold true for public service institutions. For instance, a public bus line may not be needed in a suburban area where most people own cars but may be more beneficial in a city environment. It is up to management to help employees understand what is wanted or needed in a …show more content…
A quote that I found to be important from this section was, “Each member of the enterprise contributes something different, but they all must contribute toward a common goal. Their efforts must all pull in the same direction, and their contributions must fit together to produce a whole – without gaps, without friction, without unnecessary duplication of effort.” This quote is meaningful to management principles because it explains why managing people in a common direction is important to productivity. It means that all workers for a company have a common goal. Managers must produce an atmosphere in the work place that allows each person to contribute without making any on person’s contribution more important than another’s. For instance, a manager of a software company must pull a team of developers, writers, testers, sales people, and marketing people together to make a product. Each member of the team contributes something different but each contribution is important to the finished product. Each part of a business from top to bottom must have smaller individual goals that help bring together the larger goal set for the entire organization. Managers need to find ways to communicate the organizations goals and expectations so that these goals become the goals of the smaller team and even the