FOREWORD

by Frances Hesselbein

For those who sit at the feet of Peter Drucker, and always will, and for those just discovering our greatest leadership philosopher, Drucker on Leadership is a rare and timely gift, as we approach the great celebration of Peter Drucker’s hundredth birthday. And who better to bring us this exciting new book, these new observations, than Drucker’s first Executive Ph.D. graduate. No one else can claim this unique status—a thirty-year relationship with Peter, a unique understanding of almost a third of Peter Drucker’s journey that he shared.

The Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management was established in 1990. Six weeks after I had left the CEO position at the Girl Scouts of the USA, I found myself the CEO of the new Drucker Foundation. We had ten inspiring years with Peter Drucker as our honorary chairman. He attended our board meetings, three times a year for ten years, spoke at every conference we held, and wrote forewords and chapters for many of our twenty six books. All of us—board members, staff members, and all—had numerous opportunities to listen to, dialogue with, work on the written and spoken word with Peter Drucker. With gratitude we absorbed and appreciated his messages, his voice, his timeless philosophy.

When Peter became frail, unable to be with us in person, we decided that the most loving and respectful thing we could do was to return his name to the family; we became the Leader to Leader Institute, taking the name of our journal, Leader to Leader. But it is the same organization, still committed to moving Peter Drucker’s works, his philosophy, his message across all three sectors and around the world. We are as committed today as we were in March 1990 when the Drucker Foundation was born.

I share this preamble to the Introduction with you because my reflections on Bill Cohen’s Drucker on Leadership have a deep and close appreciation and experience with the hero of the book, and I can say with documented certainty that Cohen’s Drucker on Leadership is pure Drucker. Every chapter brings a fresh, new approach to understanding the world, the works, the leadership philosophy of Peter Drucker. I read the manuscript with a critical eye, for I felt I owed Bill Cohen an alert if a Drucker concept did not come through clearly or was not consistent with the Peter Drucker that the Girl Scouts of the USA and the Drucker Foundation (Leader to Leader Institute) welcomed, understood, practiced, made their own.

Drucker on Leadership passes this most rigorous test—these lessons are the lessons all those who sat at the feet of Peter Drucker learned, practiced, and lived: the Drucker philosophy. To this day I quote Peter to audiences in all three sectors: for example, “The U.S. Army does the best job of developing leaders, because it develops leaders from within.” Bill Cohen’s analysis in Part Three captures Peter’s respect for the military model of leadership development.

Strategic planning is strengthened by “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” We see T shirts with this wisdom. Peter was the model for the principled, ethical leader. Almost one hundred years of his “gift of example” in leadership and ethics sustains us in our times when far too many have lost their way.

And when it comes to marketing, with “A business has just two functions—marketing and innovation,” Peter lights a fire.

In Part One, Bill Cohen is faithful to Peter’s focus on “mission,” defined as “why we do what we do, our reason for being,” which is all about the desired future. Determining what business we are in is a primary responsibility of the leader and the power of inclusion comes through clearly, along with determining who is our customer, an equally powerful message.

Creating an organization’s future may seem a formidable task in our uncertain times, when few dare to describe the future—even ten years from now—yet in this book are guidelines for that journey into an uncertain future. Drucker’s concepts of the process of creating an organization’s future give reassurance to today’s planners of the future. When I finished Bill Cohen’s book, I felt as though I had been listening to the voice of Peter Drucker himself.

Bill Cohen has been a faithful student, a faithful friend, a faithful disciple, and now with Drucker on Leadership he has, and I use a term I learned from Peter, truly “kept the faith.”