Wednesday, November 16, 2005
A Lost Art
One of the great things about Peter Drucker was his idea that management is a Liberal Art. This art is damn near dead from what I can see.
Two cases: my friend at Oracle and my business development friend. The Oracle girl is currently working from home, hanging out, and working on certifications while she waits to be placed on another contract which could be a few weeks. She said to me that if she was an executive she would lay herself off. The development guy is very business savy. He spent 15 minutes talking about the costs of contracting with the government. I learned a lot.
The problem is that the Oracle girl doesn't see the benefit of developing and respecting human capital, and the development guy thinks about numbers and not about people. They are both smart people who I expect will manage organizations and retire young and wealthy. However, they are not managers. They don't think conceptually, and they don't think of management as a liberal art that they need to learn.
Luckily, they will both still get rich. Why? Their brains and work ethic will still beat the competition, because nobody thinks about management as a liberal art. There is still much to be learned from Drucker's body of work, and society will be better off for it.
Two cases: my friend at Oracle and my business development friend. The Oracle girl is currently working from home, hanging out, and working on certifications while she waits to be placed on another contract which could be a few weeks. She said to me that if she was an executive she would lay herself off. The development guy is very business savy. He spent 15 minutes talking about the costs of contracting with the government. I learned a lot.
The problem is that the Oracle girl doesn't see the benefit of developing and respecting human capital, and the development guy thinks about numbers and not about people. They are both smart people who I expect will manage organizations and retire young and wealthy. However, they are not managers. They don't think conceptually, and they don't think of management as a liberal art that they need to learn.
Luckily, they will both still get rich. Why? Their brains and work ethic will still beat the competition, because nobody thinks about management as a liberal art. There is still much to be learned from Drucker's body of work, and society will be better off for it.
