Creating Your Future the Peter Drucker Way: A Report by Ethel Salonen

Wednesday, 15 June 2011; 10:00 AM – 1:30 AM, EST

Speaker: Bruce Rosenstein, www.brucerosenstein.com

Worked for USA Today for 21 years as a librarian/researcher until December 2008

Beginning in 1996 he wrote about business and management books for the newspaper’s Money section

Presentation revolved around Bruce’s new book: Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life, Published by Berett-Koehler, August 1, 2009. The book applies the principles of Drucker, whom many consider to be the “father of modern management,” to individual self-development, by encouraging the pursuit of a more multidimensional life. It is based on more than 20 years of research into Drucker’s life and thought, including several interviews with him. Click here to learn more about the book.

His website show’s Bruce’s video interview with Peter Drucker on April 11, 2005, 7 months to the day before he died at the age of 95. Some observations from the video:

• Achievement focused and multidimensional life is what you should achieve
• There is still low productivity in knowledge workers but he sees more productivity than ever before.
• We still have an overload of data…still figuring out how to transform this into information.
• Advice to young knowledge workers – go to work..don’t emphasize attending a  school such as a MBA program. A 22 year old MBA is a waste. Work for 10-15 years, be successful, and then maybe go for a MBA.
• Teaching will be radically different in 30-50 years

His presentation focused on these major themes that are presented in his workshops:

• How to apply Drucker’s principles for self-development in your personal and professional life
• How to construct a complete, balanced life plan based on Drucker’s principles
• How to create your future through developing your core competencies, and pursuing parallel/second careers
• How to live a more multidimensional life by interacting with diverse people and varied organizations
• How to incorporate lifelong learning and teaching into even the busiest lives
• How to increase your sense of personal meaning and satisfaction through social entrepreneurship, volunteerism, mentorship and servant leadership

        Drucker quote, from Management: Revised Edition:

• “The purpose of the work on making the future is not to decide what should be done tomorrow, but what should be done today to have a tomorrow.”
• He also advised to identify and take advantage of “the future that has already happened.” What are the current trends that affect your professional and personal life, and what are the implications for the future? What can you start doing right now to remain relevant in your workplace and in the profession?

Comments from Bruce Rosenstein

• Focus on the future, not the past – stop defending the past
• What can you do to remain relevant in the various worlds you live in?
• Consider second careers in teaching, writing, art and music.
• Build continuous lifelong learning, exploring and teaching.
• Reinvent yourself, people change, different person, needs, abilities and perspectives.  Reinvent your life and your career
• Social entrepreneurship – consider choices and changes for the second half of your life – over or under 40
• Create and maintain your total life list. What initiative from this list is first?
• Don’t expect everything to happen at once.

For this book review I’m going to try something a little different. I’ll be posting a brief review and then providing a few discussion questions that won’t necessarily require you to have read the book itself. The idea is to stimulate a little more commenting and discussion in the comments. We’ll see how that works.

The book I’m writing about today is called Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor, and Lead (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/276865965). I was first turned onto this book by a few of the employees at my company who read it and suggested the library purchase a copy. Since we bought a copy it has been one of the books with the highest circulation numbers we have. So I figured I should give it a read despite my usual disdain for popular management books. I’ve got to say that I’m glad I picked it up.

The A3 Management Process is one of the main tools that Toyota uses to solve problems and facilitate lean management. A3 is simply the type of paper they would usually use to write their reports on, but the ideas behind the A3s go far beyond that. What they are intended to do is really get to the root sources of problems and to avoid jumping ahead to the first solution that comes to mind. The process can be broken down into about four or five main steps. The first step is what the book describes as “going to the gemba.” Gemba is a Japanese word meaning something like “real place.” Going to the gemba is the idea of becoming very familiar with the people involved in any particular issue and the work they do. Getting their input and understanding their view of what the problem is and how it might be resolved is integral the A3 process. Without going to the source and understanding all of the factors it is almost impossible to come up with an adequate solution. The second step in the A3 process is finding the root cause of a problem. This is sort of an extension of going to the gemba, but relates specifically to the problem at hand. This portion of the book introduces the idea of the “Five Whys” which is the notion that you need to continue to ask why something is happening until you get to the most basic cause of the problem. It may take more or less than five whys, but if you can continue to ask why about something more basic then you have not yet reached the root cause.

The next couple of steps deal more directly with providing solutions, or as the book prefers to call them “countermeasures.”  Solutions sound too final and those involved with A3 processes recognize that every countermeasure will provide its own set of problems to be worked on. In order to provide the best countermeasure(s) you need to use set-based decision-making. You must provide a range of possible countermeasures and work through them all with those people at the gemba to see what advantages and disadvantages exist with each of them. The A3 process also relies on Pull-Based Authority rather than assuming that those who are on the highest level of the command chain will make all of the decisions and that those at the lower levels will simply go along with those decisions. The idea is to talk through countermeasures until there is agreement and then get those who need to act to commit to seeing the process through. The A3 process promotes this by having those who take responsibility initial what they will do and when they will have it done.

The final step is to measure what the results of the countermeasure have been and determine if it is working. Even if it is mostly working that does not mean that additional problems have not arisen and may need to be dealt with. If, on the other hand, the countermeasure was not successful, then it is time to return to the beginning and see what else should be tried.

That is a brief summary of the contents of this book. What is most interesting about the way the book is designed is that it is set up to show managers and other people how to take others through the A3 process and encourage them to analyze problems and solutions in this way. The book is set up so that each chapter lets you look at the A3 process from the perspective of both a manager and his/her employee and see how the employee is encouraged to understand and use the process, while the manager gives the employee the room to make a few mistakes along the road to becoming a better A3 thinker.

All in all, Managing to Learn does a good job of explaining an interesting and useful management process while also showing how to put it into practice in the real world. The A3 process is shown to be a fairly scientific way in which to get at the root causes of problems and find viable solutions for them. I would say the book is definitely worth picking up.

Questions

1. Is the A3 process fundamentally at odds with the more recent internet/Web 2.0 idea of simply trying many things and seeing whether they work or not? Does it make more sense to do a detailed analysis and put forth a specific plan, or is it preferable to put a small amount of effort into many solutions and see which provides the best results?

2. The book examples of taking people through the A3 process all end in the near consensus of the employees involved and consensus is certainly a laudable goal. Do high levels of employee agreement seem realistic? Why or why not?

3. The A3 process places a high amount of importance on the thorough examination of problems and their solutions. This is somewhat at odds with the natural human impulse to find a quick answer and run with it, but could also lead to unnecessary stalling or foot dragging. Have you encountered either of these problems and/or do you have suggestions for avoiding them?

Alex Grigg

Those of us posting to the Reading Blog have been rather busy, as happens to most of us, so we’ve gone a little longer between posts than we originally intended. I’m just writing to draw everyone's attention to the fact that we have added a new title to the titles list. I will be doing a review and initiating a discussion of Managing to Learn within a week or two. That book has been heavily used by employees at my company because it gives a good overview of the A3 Management style and thought processes that have been so successfully used by Toyota and a growing number of other companies. Best of all for those of us who don't have a lot of extra reading time on our hands, it’s a relatively short book (138 pgs).

Pick up Managing to Learn now if you’d like to join in on the upcoming discussion!

Miki Saxon did a seven part series on "Leader vs. manager" in the Leadership Turn blog.  The series "discussing Warren Bennis’ 13 differences between leaders and managers in light of today’s modern workforce."  If you wonder what might separate a leader from a manager, this series will give you qualities to consider. For example:

The manager administers; the leader innovates

The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.

The series is available at:

• Leader vs. manager 1/7
• Leader vs. manager 2/7
• Leader vs. manager 3/7
• Leader vs. manager 4/7
• Leader vs. manager 5/7
• Leader vs. manager 6/7
• Leader vs. manager 7/7

I recently attended a Toronto Chapter event where a panel of knowledge managers presented on KM – and discussed what it takes as a manager to successfully steer a KM project.  I think many of their key points don’t apply just to KM but to successful management of any type of project – and especially information projects – and that their definition of what it takes to be a good knowledge manager are EXACTLY the skills it takes to be a good manager – period.  What do you think?

Challenges to success:

• Cultural change (and resistance thereto)
• Communication amongst the different departments (or lack thereof)
• Operating without an independent budget (as is often the case) means continually begging and pleading for resources

Suggestions to ensure success:

• Insert yourself into people’s team meetings
• Set up joint meetings (with an agenda!)
• Make sure you tell people what it is you bring to the table
• Be aware of where your resources are going to come from
• Leverage projects which reflect more than one goal
• Make the plan and ask for the money
• Tie your plans to specific business problems
• Don’t blow the business problem out of proportion – do you need a document management system or do you just need policies and procedures for documents

What do you need to be a good KM manager?

• A curiosity about people’s needs
• An understanding of technology
• An ability to forge relationships
• You need to be a good sales person – who can ask probing questions and listen to what clients say and then find the solution
• Marketing skills
• Networking skills
• The ability to keep a database in your mind of who’s working on what and making those connections
• Project management skills – including being able to manage scope
• Business analysis skills
• Business process management skills

Do you hear management lingo that is unfamiliar?  Are you expected to  understand  a management method, but you aren’t quite sure what it is?  According to its editor:

Value Based Management.net is a
management portal specifically aimed at the information needs of senior executives with an interest in value creation, managing for value and valuation. We provide learning materials
explaining management methods, models and theories on strategy,
performance, finance, valuation, change, corporate governance,
communication, marketing, leadership and responsibility with links to
additional resources in the field.

The homepage — a crowded list of topics — contains links to specific ideas such as:

• Crisis Management tips
• Return on Investment
• Six Sigma
• Result Oriented Management
• The 7-Ps (Marketing Mix)

Created by a Dutch consultant, the information is organized well and easy to read.  However, the print is very small, so you may want to alter the text size in your browser so that it is bigger (in Firefox use View, Text Size).  References are included for learning more about each topic and to help assure you that the information has not been pulled out of the air.

I could see referring to this site when I hear a term I don’t know or if I want to quickly read-up on a management theory.  How might you use it?  That will be up to you.