"What differentiates organizations is whether they can make common people perform uncommon things"

All throughout his life, Peter Drucker who is considered the "father of modern management" has written 39 books and a countless number of articles that have continued to inspire and influence people and organizations throughout the world for over 70 years. His teaching spread from books to seminars and classes, even teaching at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management with his last class at the age of 92. His life came to an end at 95 due to natural causes, but his teachings continue to live on in the books we read today and the people he has inspired throughout his career.

Elizabeth Edersheim, strategic consultant and author, had a fantastic opportunity to have full access to Peter Drucker's life for a year and a half before he passed away, and in her book The Definitive Drucker she outlines Peter Drucker's core principles and how they relate to the business world we live in today. Elizabeth has done an amazing job not only capturing and clarifying Drucker's management concepts and practices, but also relating them into questions and actions that relate to the modern organization. The book goes over how Drucker's ideals came to be in the 1930's and onwards and how they still apply today. There are five main themes Elizabeth goes over:

1. Doing Business in the Current World and the Customer
2. Innovation and Abandonment of Products and Ideas
3. Collaboration and Orchestration of Resources and People
4. The People of the Organization and Knowledge of the People
5. Effective Decision Making and tying the above four steps together.

Gathering information from Peter Drucker himself in his nineties and his books, Elizabeth Edersheim does a memorable job of compiling everything that Peter Drucker has achieved in his life with numerous interviews from CEO's that have been inspired by Drucker. She has multiple examples of successful companies that Drucker has lead to success by implementing his core ideas and making CEO's ask "the right questions", from General Electric to the investment firm Edward Jones.

Whether it's Drucker's idea of "Who is your customer, or who isn't your customer", the stories of ServiceMaster's dedication to the people of the organization and playing on their people's strengths or even the innovative strengths of General Electric and how Jack Welch created the mantra of "Be #1 or #2 in the business or abandon it", The Definitive Drucker goes into thoughtful and precise detail. The importance of knowledge workers of today is explained in huge detail and of critical importance as this is the engine that drives successful corporations today (Google, Apple, P&G, Toyota) along with how one makes a decision and degenerates it into work.

A must read for anyone that wants to be more effective in their organization, whether you are a floor worker to a CEO. Highly recommended for those that want to understand and begin to study the writings of Peter Drucker and how it still relates to the modern corporate environment we live in today and in the future.

Influential Drucker Trivia from The Definitive Drucker:

"In 1954, Peter told his publisher "Management needs strategy." His publisher responded that "strategy" was a term for war, not business - and it would repel readers. By 1975 (21 years later), the topic of strategy dominated the top management writings in journals and books."