A Class with Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World's Greatest Management Teacher [Hardcover]

William A. Cohen Ph.D. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 14, 2007

Long considered the world's greatest thinker and writer on management, Peter Drucker's teachings continue to inspire leaders everywhere. From 1975 to 1979, author William Cohen studied under the Great Man and became the first graduate of his doctoral program. What Drucker taught him literally changed his life. In a matter of a few years, he was recommissioned in the Air Force and rose to the rank of major general. Eventually, he became a full professor, management consultant, multibook author, and university president--as well as maintaining a nearly lifelong friendship with the master.In "A Class with Drucker", Cohen shares many of Drucker's teachings that never made it into his countless books and articles, ideas that were offered to his students in classroom or informal settings. Cohen expands on Drucker's lessons with personal anecdotes about his teacher's personality, lack of pretension, and interactions with students and others. He also shows how Drucker's ideas can be applied to the real-world challenges managers face today. Enlightening and intriguing, "A Class with Drucker" will enable anyone to gain from the timeless wisdom of the inspiring man himself.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This book, done by one of The Master’s first PhD recipients, is a warm and useful read.” Business to Business, December 1, 2007

"...there's lots you can do with the book, starting with just enjoying the ride. It's a series of compelling lessons, all wrapped around a towering intellectual and some wonderful anecdotes, with Mr. Cohen, himself a management educator, adding his own supplementary thoughts at points. Some of it will be familiar for those steeped in Peter Drucker, and some of it will be

new. But all of it should be fascinating." The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

Book Description

Long considered the world’s greatest thinker and writer on management, Peter Drucker’s teachings continue to inspire leaders everywhere. From 1975 to 1979, author William Cohen studied under the Great Man and became the first graduate of his doctoral program. What Drucker taught him literally changed his life. In a matter of a few years, he was recommissioned in the Air Force and rose to the rank of major general. Eventually, he became a full professor, management consultant, multibook author, and university president—as well as maintaining a nearly lifelong friendship with the master. In A Class with Drucker, Cohen shares many of Drucker’s teachings that never made it into his countless books and articles, ideas that were offered to his students in classroom or informal settings. Cohen expands on Drucker's lessons with personal anecdotes about his teacher’s personality, lack of pretension, and interactions with students and others. He also shows how Drucker’s ideas can be applied to the real-world challenges managers face today. Now every reader can benefit from Drucker’s thoughts on such topics as:

what everybody knows is frequently wrong • why everyone should approach problems with their ignorance • top executives should stay no longer than six years • some so-called menial tasks can only be done by the boss • what everyone needs to be an effective manage • why self-confidence is a necessity

Enlightening and intriguing, A Class with Drucker will enable anyone to gain from the timeless wisdom of the inspiring man himself.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 17 and up
  
• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: AMACOM (November 14, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814409199
• ISBN-13: 978-0814409190
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #995,203 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William A. Cohen, Ph.D. (Pasadena, CA) is an authority on leadership and strategy formulation and deployment. He gives speeches and seminars for the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, the Air War College, the FBI Academy, all four armed services, and corporations from Boeing to The Cheesecake Factory. He is the author of many books including The New Art of the Leader, The Wisdom of the Generals , and How to Make It Big as a Consultant (978-0-8144-7073-2).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One student's fond memories of "The Master of Modern Management", December 17, 2007

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Class with Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World's Greatest Management Teacher (Hardcover)

Peter Drucker was William Cohen's professor "in probably the first executive PhD program in management in academic history" from 1975 until 1979 and Cohen was the first graduate of this program at Claremont Graduate School. His classes with Drucker met once a week, beginning at 4:30 PM and resumed after a dinner break, continuing until at least 10 PM but sometimes later. These were lecture courses without use of notes but Drucker, a master of the Socratic method of teaching, encouraged Q&A exchanges with students. ("In answering a question he might go off in an unexpected direction which seemingly had nothing to do with the question asked. Before you knew it, he was giving a lecture within a lecture.") He attracted so many students that his classes met in the largest room available. He used the same textbook for all his classes (Management: Tasks, Responsibilities and Practices) and never used a teaching assistant to grade for him. During the dinner break, instructors and students from various classes gathered at an open bar and then dinner in the Faculty Club. Cohen occasionally found himself seated with a group that included Drucker.

What we have in this volume is a wealth of Cohen's memories of those years as a student at Claremont Graduate School, his reflections on what he learned from Peter Drucker, and discussions of how those lessons were then applied in his personal life and especially in his career. "I have tried to come close to capturing his actual words, but in any case, I believe I achieved the spirit of what he said and how he said it. My aim is to put the reader in the classroom as if he were there with me at the time hearing Drucker and participating in every interaction I had with him." Cohen succeeds brilliantly in achieving these and other objectives.

If there were a business counterpart to the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Peter Drucker would be among those selected for such an honor. (Who else? That's an interesting question but the whole idea would no doubt have appalled Drucker.) Of special interest to me is what I learned about his teaching style. Cohen obviously accumulated an abundance of notes, old papers, and other sources of information from or about his several years of their association with "The Father of Modern Management." As Cohen repeatedly suggests, Drucker had a unique talent for "cutting right to the heart of the [given] issue." Among the several lessons that Cohen learned and shares, these are the ones that caught my eye:

"The first task of any business management is to decide what business it was in."

"What everyone `knows' is frequently wrong."

"Outstanding performance is inconsistent with fear of failure."

"Selling and marketing are neither synonymous nor complementary. One could consider them adversarial in some cases. There is no doubt that if marketing were done perfectly, selling, in the actual sense of the word, would be unnecessary."

"The first systematic book on leadership [i.e. The Persian Expedition or Anabasis] was written by Xenophon more than 2,000 years ago, and it is still the best."

To them I presume to add an observation Drucker made in an article published in the Harvard Business Review years before, in 1963: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."

Cohen notes that Drucker once asked two questions of Jack Welch that then guided and informed his leadership of GE after he succeeded Reggie Jones as its new CEO. "If you weren't already in the business, would you enter it today?" followed by a second, more difficult question, "What are you going to do about it?" Today, other CEOs should carefully consider the importance of these questions, answer them, and then proceed accordingly. "Drucker taught what to do. He was very specific about this. However, he did not teach how to do it." One of this book's substantial value-added benefits is that, throughout his narrative, Cohen offers his own observations and suggestions as to how to achieve the various business objectives that Drucker recommends, accompanied by dozens of relevant examples to illustrate key points. Those who share my high regard for Peter Drucker's life and work will be as appreciative as I am of what William Cohen shares in this volume.

Among the 40 books written by Peter Drucker (November 19, 1909-November 11, 2005), my personal favorites include The Practice of Management (1954), The Effective Executive (1966), Management: Tasks, Responsibilities and Practices (1973), Adventures of a Bystander (1998), Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management (1998), The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management (2001), The Effective Executive (Revised Edition, 2002), Classic Drucker: From the Pages of Harvard Business Review (2006), and People and Performance: The Best of Peter Drucker on Management (2007).

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quick and Easy Education, April 15, 2008

By 

The Happy Artist (Northern New York) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Class with Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World's Greatest Management Teacher (Hardcover)

I became an entrepreneur and business owner after I graduated school, so I never took business courses - especially at the graduate level. My customers have taught me some, I had some mentors and family advice, but mostly I have learned from by either making mistakes or having successes in my stores. And I am a firm believer in learning from books.
Business books seem to be about 80-20. 80% stinkers, 20% valuable. And then every so often that 20% turns out to have real gem. This book from Dr Cohen is a gem, with a lot of good, practical advice I can apply immediately to improve my bottom line. If you believe in continuing your business education with books, get this one. The advice is Peter Drucker's, and Dr Cohen fully credits the ideas to him, but I credit Dr Cohen for making these lessons readable, understandable, and easy to apply. Bravo!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A look at Drucker in the classroom from one of his students, May 29, 2008

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Class with Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World's Greatest Management Teacher (Hardcover)

Peter Drucker is revered as a management guru and his books and articles have been a mainstay in business reading for decades. Even if you have read some of his books, don't you think you should read more? But maybe you have read everything and wish there was something more. We see similar market hunger from the devotees of artists and musicians who have died. These folks look for anything not released or some draft versions of works.

William Cohen was working on his executive Ph.D. at Claremont when he studied with Drucker. While most of us know Drucker from his writings, and a much smaller number from presentations, a minuscule number of people were able to sit in his classrooms. Cohen has combed his notes and recollections to put together 19 chapters of what it was like to study with Drucker as a student and the lessons he learned from him.

It is an interesting enough book and Cohen does make contributions of his own. Just don't mistake this for a book BY Drucker and you will be just fine. While I would recommend starting with Drucker's classic works, this is a good supplement to the great man's direct offerings for those who want even more.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI