A Year With Peter Drucker

A Year With Peter Drucker compiles 52 lessons with weekly exercises into one comprehensive, year-long curriculum for managers, leaders, and those who aspire to be one or the other, based on the teachings of the father of modern management.

One of Drucker’s biggest ideas is about a tool he calls feedback analysis. Here’s how it works:

Every time you make a major decision in your life, you write down the outcome you expect it will have 6, 12, and 18 months from now.

After those periods have passed, you simply pull out your original assessment again and see how you did. Were you completely spot on? Did something entirely different happen?

This simple exercise will help you to see patterns emerge over the years, which will let you figure out what you’re good at, and what you can’t do well. Only if you’re self-aware can you direct your career efforts where they get you and the world the best results, which makes feedback analysis the number one tool in your leadership belt.

Of course, the earlier you start this practice, the better, because your early career choices will shape your entire professional future. But if you’re already a few years into the game, don’t fret – it’s better to start now than never. Just get going and see what positive changes this practice brings into your life.

Drucker says there are just two crucial skills any great manager must possess. That’s good news, but both are tough to master. They are: The ability to concentrate your efforts. The ability to understand and interpret data correctly. Concentration has nothing to do with personal productivity in this case. It means you have to get your company to focus on the areas where it can generate the maximum results. Where is your company most productive, with the least amount of effort? For example, if you have a big engineering team, with lots of nerdy developers, who love to tinker and come up with new, innovative software, then don’t force them to fix customer service bugs all the time. Let them roam, so your company can focus on its core competencies and thrive on its strengths – or as Drucker said: “Don’t major in the minors.” Also, leave sinking ships early. Don’t keep dying products afloat. You’ll only dilute your efforts. It really only pays to be the best in the world (The Dip, anyone?). Skill number two becomes more and more important in our “Big Data” age. Collecting data is easy. It happens on autopilot with most software by now. Those who are able to read the data, win. During the 2007 financial crisis, four outsiders made billions, just because they looked into…