As
we all know, the new year is a time of renewal. A time to begin anew.
Any regular reader of this blog is familiar with my nearly ridiculous
fondness for Peter Drucker. In honor of Profesor Drucker I would like
to give this year's first blog to the man himself.
Drucker
once wrote an article describing seven experiences that taught him
how to grow, to change, and to age–without
becoming a prisoner of the past. The contents of this article have
been labeled Revitalizing
Oneself. The remainder
of this blog post are Peters' words.
I
was not yet 18 when, having finished high school, I left my native
Vienna and went to Hamburg as a trainee in a cotton-export firm. My
father was not very happy. Ours had been a family of civil servants,
professors, lawyers, and physicians for a very long time. He
therefore wanted me to be a full-time university student, but I was
tired of being a schoolboy and wanted to go to work. To appease my
father, but without any serious intention, I enrolled at Hamburg
University in the law faculty. In those remote days--the year was
1927--one did not have to attend classes to be a perfectly proper
university student. All one had to do to obtain a university degree
was to pay a small annual fee and show up for an exam at the end of
four years.
THE
FIRST EXPERIENCE
Taught
by Verdi
The
work at the export firm was terribly boring, and I learned very
little. Work began at 7:30 in the morning and was over at 4 in the
afternoon on weekdays and at noon on Saturdays. So I had lots of free
time. Once a week I went to the opera.
On
one of those evenings I went to hear an opera by the great
19th-century Italian composer, Giuseppe Verdi--the last opera he
wrote, Falstaff. It has now become one of Verdi's most popular
operas, but it was rarely performed then. Both singers and audiences
thought it too difficult. I was totally overwhelmed by it. Although I
had heard a great many operas, I had never heard anything like that.
I have never forgotten the impression that evening made on me.
When
I made a study, I found that this opera, with its gaiety, its zest
for life, and its incredible vitality, was written by a man of 80! To
me 80 was an incredible age. Then I read what Verdi himself had
written when he was asked why, at that age, when he was already a
famous man and considered one of the foremost opera composers of his
century, he had taken on the hard work of writing one more opera, and
an exceedingly demanding one. "All my life as a musician,"
he wrote, "I have striven for perfection. It has always eluded
me. I surely had an obligation to make one more try.”
I
have never forgotten those words--they made an indelible impression
on me. When he was 18 Verdi was already a seasoned musician. I had no
idea what I would become, except that I knew by that time that I was
unlikely to be a success exporting cotton textiles. But I resolved
that whatever my life's work would be, Verdi's words would be my
lodestar. I resolved that if I ever reached an advanced age, I would
not give up but would keep on. In the meantime I would strive for
perfection, even though, as I well knew, it would surely always elude
me.
THE
SECOND EXPERIENCE
Taught
by Phidias
It
was at about this same time, and also in Hamburg during my stay as a
trainee, that I read a story that conveyed to me what perfection
means. It is a story of the greatest sculptor of ancient Greece,
Phidias. He was commissioned around 440 b.c. to make the statues that
to this day stand on the roof of the Parthenon, in Athens. They are
considered among the greatest sculptures of the Western tradition,
but when Phidias submitted his bill, the city accountant of Athens
refused to pay it. "These statues," the accountant said,
"stand on the roof of the temple, and on the highest hill in
Athens. Nobody can see anything but their fronts. Yet you have
charged us for sculpting them in the round--that is, for doing their
back sides, which nobody can see.”
“You
are wrong," Phidias retorted. "The gods can see them."
I read this, as I remember, shortly after I had listened to Falstaff,
and it hit me hard. I have not always lived up to it. I have done
many things that I hope the gods will not notice, but I have always
known that one has to strive for perfection even if only the gods
notice.
THE
THIRD EXPERIENCE
Taught
by Journalism
A
few years later I moved to Frankfurt. I worked first as a trainee in
a brokerage firm. Then, after the New York stock-market crash, in
October 1929, when the brokerage firm went bankrupt, I was hired on
my 20th birthday by Frankfurt's largest newspaper as a financial and
foreign-affairs writer. I continued to be enrolled as a law student
at the university because in those days one could easily transfer
from one European university to any other. I still was not interested
in the law, but I remembered the lessons of Verdi and of Phidias. A
journalist has to write about many subjects, so I decided I had to
know something about many subjects to be at least a competent
journalist.
The
newspaper I worked for came out in the afternoon. We began work at 6
in the morning and finished by a quarter past 2 in the afternoon,
when the last edition went to press. So I began to force myself to
study afternoons and evenings: international relations and
international law; the history of social and legal institutions;
finance; and so on. Gradually, I developed a system. I still adhere
to it. Every three or four years I pick a new subject. It may be
Japanese art; it may be economics. Three years of study are by no
means enough to master a subject, but they are enough to understand
it. So for more than 60 years I have kept on studying one subject at
a time. That not only has given me a substantial fund of knowledge.
It has also forced me to be open to new disciplines and new
approaches and new methods--for every one of the subjects I have
studied makes different assumptions and employs a different
methodology.
THE
FOURTH EXPERIENCE
Taught
by an Editor-in-Chief
The
next experience to report in this story of keeping myself
intellectually alive and growing is something that was taught by an
editor-in-chief, one of Europe's leading newspapermen. The editorial
staff at the newspaper consisted of very young people. At age 22 I
became one of the three assistant managing editors. The reason was
not that I was particularly good. In fact, I never became a
first-rate daily journalist. But in those years, around 1930, the
people who should have held the kind of position I had--people age 35
or so--were not available in Europe. They had been killed in World
War I. Even highly responsible positions had to be filled by young
people like me.
The
editor-in-chief, then around 50, took infinite pains to train and
discipline his young crew. He discussed with each of us every week
the work we had done. Twice a year, right after New Year's and then
again before summer vacations began in June, we would spend a
Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday discussing our work over the
preceding six months. The editor would always start out with the
things we had done well. Then he would proceed to the things we had
tried to do well. Next he reviewed the things where we had not tried
hard enough. And finally, he would subject us to a scathing critique
of the things we had done badly or had failed to do. The last two
hours of that session would then serve as a projection of our work
for the next six months: What were the things on which we should
concentrate? What were the things we should improve? What were the
things each of us needed to learn? And a week later each of us was
expected to submit to the editor-in-chief our new program of work and
learning for the next six months. I tremendously enjoyed the
sessions, but I forgot them as soon as I left the paper.
Almost
10 years later, after I had come to the United States, I remembered
them. It was in the early 1940s, after I had become a senior
professor, started my own consulting practice, and begun to publish
major books. Since then I have set aside two weeks every summer in
which to review my work during the preceding year, beginning with the
things I did well but could or should have done better, down to the
things I did poorly and the things I should have done but did not do.
I decide what my priorities should be in my consulting work, in my
writing, and in my teaching. I have never once truly lived up to the
plan I make each August, but it has forced me to live up to Verdi's
injunction to strive for perfection, even though "it has always
eluded me" and still does.
THE
FIFTH EXPERIENCE
Taught
by a Senior Partner
My
next learning experience came a few years after my experience on the
newspaper. From Frankfurt I moved to London in 1933, first working as
a securities analyst in a large insurance company and then, a year
later, moving to a small but fast-growing private bank as an
economist and the executive secretary to the three senior partners.
One, the founder, was a man in his seventies; the two others were in
their midthirties. At first I worked exclusively with the two younger
men, but after I had been with the firm some three months or so, the
founder called me into his office and said, "I didn't think much
of you when you came here and still don't think much of you, but you
are even more stupid than I thought you would be, and much more
stupid than you have any right to be." Since the two younger
partners had been praising me to the skies each day, I was
dumbfounded.
And
then the old gentlemen said, "I understand you did very good
securities analysis at the insurance company. But if we had wanted
you to do securities-analysis work, we would have left you where you
were. You are now the executive secretary to the partners, yet you
continue to do securities analysis. What should you be doing now, to
be effective in your new job?" I was furious, but still I
realized that the old man was right. I totally changed my behavior
and my work. Since then, when I have a new assignment, I ask myself
the question, "What do I need to do, now that I have a new
assignment, to be effective?" Every time, it is something
different. Discovering what it is requires concentration on the
things that are crucial to the new challenge, the new job, the new
task.
THE
SIXTH EXPERIENCE
Taught
by the Jesuits and the Calvinists
Quite
a few years later, around 1945, after I had moved from England to the
United States in 1937, I picked for my three-year study subject early
modern European history, especially the 15th and 16th centuries. I
found that two European institutions had become dominant forces in
Europe: the Jesuit Order in the Catholic South and the Calvinist
Church in the Protestant North. Both were founded independently in
1536. Both adopted the same learning discipline.
Whenever
a Jesuit priest or a Calvinist pastor does anything of
significance--making a key decision, for instance--he is expected to
write down what results he anticipates. Nine months later he traces
back from the actual results to those anticipations. That very soon
shows him what he did well and what his strengths are. It also shows
him what he has to learn and what habits he has to change. Finally,
it shows him what he has no gift for and cannot do well. I have
followed that method for myself now for 50 years. It brings out what
one's strengths are--and that is the most important thing an
individual can know about himself or herself. It brings out areas
where improvement is needed and suggests what kind of improvement is
needed. Finally, it brings out things an individual cannot do and
therefore should not even try to do. To know one's strengths, to know
how to improve them, and to know what one cannot do--they are the
keys to continuous learning.
THE
SEVENTH EXPERIENCE
Taught
by Schumpeter
One
more experience, and then I am through with the story of my personal
development. At Christmas 1949, when I had just begun to teach
management at New York University, my father, then 73 years old, came
to visit us from California. Right after New Year's, on January 3,
1950, he and I went to visit an old friend of his, the famous
economist Joseph Schumpeter. My father had already retired, but
Schumpeter, then 66 and world famous, was still teaching at Harvard
and was very active as the president of the American Economic
Association.
In
1902 my father was a very young civil servant in the Austrian
Ministry of Finance, but he also did some teaching in economics at
the university. Thus he had come to know Schumpeter, who was then, at
age 19, the most brilliant of the young students. Two more-different
people are hard to imagine: Schumpeter was flamboyant, arrogant,
abrasive, and vain; my father was quiet, the soul of courtesy, and
modest to the point of being self-effacing. Still, the two became
fast friends and remained fast friends.
By
1949 Schumpeter had become a very different person. In his last year
of teaching at Harvard, he was at the peak of his fame. The two old
men had a wonderful time together, reminiscing about the old days.
Suddenly, my father asked with a chuckle, "Joseph, do you still
talk about what you want to be remembered for?" Schumpeter broke
out in loud laughter. For Schumpeter was notorious for having said,
when he was 30 or so and had published the first two of his great
economics books, that what he really wanted to be remembered for was
having been "Europe's greatest lover of beautiful women and
Europe's greatest horseman--and perhaps also the world's greatest
economist." Schumpeter said, "Yes, this question is still
important to me, but I now answer it differently. I want to be
remembered as having been the teacher who converted half a dozen
brilliant students into first-rate economists.”
He
must have seen an amazed look on my father's face, because he
continued, "You know, Adolph, I have now reached the age where I
know that being remembered for books and theories is not enough. One
does not make a difference unless it is a difference in the lives of
people." One reason my father had gone to see Schumpeter was
that it was known that the economist was very sick and would not live
long. Schumpeter died five days after we visited him.
I
have never forgotten that conversation. I learned from it three
things: First, one has to ask oneself what one wants to be remembered
for. Second, that should change. It should change both with one's own
maturity and with changes in the world. Finally, one thing worth
being remembered for is the difference one makes in the lives of
people.
I
am telling this long story for a simple reason. All the people I know
who have managed to remain effective during a long life have learned
pretty much the same things I learned. That applies to effective
business executives and to scholars, to top-ranking military people
and to first-rate physicians, to teachers and to artists. Whenever I
work with a person, I try to find out to what the individual
attributes his or her success. I am invariably told stories that are
remarkably like mine.
