A "Best of PT" interview from October 1968 withAmerica's leading
management consultant
Peter Drucker wrote his first book, The End of Economic Man, in
1939, when he was 29 years old. Fifty-three birthdays later, he has
completed his 27th book, entitled Managing for the Future: The Nineties
and Beyond (HarperCollins) while maintaining a professorship of social
sciences and management at the Claremont Graduate School, in Claremont,
California. A sampler from his job history would include management
consultant to several of the country's largest companies, economist, news
correspondent, and professor.
When PSYCHOLOGY TODAY first spoke to Drucker in 1968, universities
didn't know what hit them. An entire generation of baby boomers was
entering college and expressing their profound disapproval of the adult
educational system, which they felt lacked the flexibility to encourage
all but the most staid vocations. Eventually, those graduates expressed
similar disapproval with the "business-as-usual" approach to
hiring.
In the face of their dissatisfaction, Drucker, as a management
consultant, was in a unique position to counsel people, young and old,
about their career choices and about which roads they might better have
taken. His words reveal a marked suspicion of rigidly organized education
and encourage businesses to offer differing job opportunities to
employees throughout their careers.
After enduring a decade wherein yearlong waiting lists for the
"right" kindergarten were viewed as a necessity in order to receive a
proper education, we may find that Drucker's words of discovery and
freedom ring especially true.
Psychology Today. How can young people today know where they fit in
this world? How can they choose?
Peter Drucker: Here I am, 58, and I still don't know what I am
going to do when I grow up. My children and their spouses think I am
kidding when I say that, but I am not. Nobody tells them that fife is not
that categorized. And nobody tells them that the only way to find what
you want is to create a job. Nobody worth his salt has ever moved into an
existing job. There are a few elementary things you can do first.
PT: And what are they?
Drucker: First, you know what you don't want to do, but what you do
want to do is still a mystery. There is no way of finding out but trying.
Second, one doesn't t marry a job. A job is your opportunity to find
out-that's all it is. You owe no loyalty to your employer other than not
betraying secrets. Be ruthless about finding out whether you belong; I
am. Finally, looking around never hurts. One can always quit. Don't try
to reason out those things one can learn only from experience. Do you
know enough about yourself?. There are things you can know, even at age
20.
PT: When I was 20 I knew so many things. I knew that life was
exciting and romantic and a great adventure. What should my career
thoughts have been?
Drucker: I think one of the most important things would be to know
if you like pressure. I am one who needs pressure. I am sluggish,
lethargic, until the adrenaline starts pouring. People differ so. One of
the men I am closest to goes to pieces under pressure. He is one of the
most respected urologists in the field, but he spends nights at the
bedside of a critically ill patient, and it is obvious he is going to
pieces before the patient dies. He's a wreck-which probably makes him a
good doctor.
PT: What else should you know besides your ability to withstand
pressure?
Drucker: You have to know whether you belong in a big organization.
In a big organization, you don't see results, you are too damn far away
from them. The enjoyment is being a part of the big structure. If you
tell people you work for G.E., everyone knows what G.E. is. And I think
you need to know whether you want to be in daily combat as a
dragon-slayer or if you want to think things through, to analyze,
prepare. Do you enjoy surmounting the daily crisis, or do you really get
your satisfaction out of anticipating and preventing the crisis? These
things I believe one does know about oneself at age 20.
PT: What is the hardest thing to know?
Drucker: There is one great question I don't think most young
people can answer: "Are you a perceptive or an analytical person?" This
is terribly important. Either you start out with an insight and then
think the problem through, or you start out with a train of thought and
arrive at a conclusion. One really needs to be able to do both, but most
people can't. I am totally unanalytical and completely perceptive. I have
never understood anything that I have not seen.
PT: Is it like being right- or left-handed?
Drucker. That's right. The only ambidextrous people are trial
lawyers-they both read and listen. Nobody else can. I am a listener; I
can read after I listen but not before. Probably I can't even write
first, but that's pathological.
PT: But what is the most important thing about the choice of the
job, apart from the personality of the person?
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