Book Review: On the Profession of Management by Peter Drucker

Book of the Week

This book gathers together Peter Drucker's articles from Harvard Business Review and frames them with a thoughtful introduction from the Review's Editor Nan Stone. Drucker has sought out, identified, and examined the most important issues confronting managers, from corporate strategy to management style to social change. Through his unique lens, this volume gives us the rare opportunity to trace the evolution of the great shifts in our workplaces, and to understand more clearly the role of managers Amazon Review

Excerpt from Book –

The Effective Decision

Effective executives do not make a great many decisions. They concentrate on what is important. They try to make the few important decisions on the highest level of conceptual understanding. They try to find the constants in a situation, to think through what is strategic and generic rather than to “solve problems”. They are, therefore, not overly impressed by speed in decision making; rather, they consider virtuosity in manipulating a great many variables a symptom of sloppy thinking. They want to know what the decision is all about and what the underlying realities are which it has to satisfy. They want impact rather than technique. And they want to be sound rather than clever.

Every decision is a risk taking judgment. But unless these elements are the stepping stones of the decision process, the executive will not arrive at a right, and certainly not at an effective, decision. Steps involved in decision making process –

1.     Classifying the problems – Is it generic? Is it exceptional and unique? Or is it the first manifestation of a new genus for which a rule has yet to be developed?

2.     Defining the problem- What are we dealing with?

3.     Specifying the answer to the problem- What are the boundary conditions”?

4.     Deciding what is “right”, rather than what is acceptable, in order to meet the boundary conditions. What will fully satisfy the specifications before attention is given to the compromises, adaptations, and concessions needed to make the decision acceptable?

5.     Building into the decision the action to carry it out- What does the action commitment have to be? Who has to know about it?

6.     Testing the validity and effectiveness of the decision against the actual course of events. How is the decision being carried out? Are the assumptions on which it is based appropriate or obsolete?

Great Book......Buy book to read more 

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