Peter Drucker on Knowledge Workers, Management and Leadership Essay Example

Peter Drucker on Knowledge Workers, Management and Leadership Essay If youre reading this, youre almost certainly a knowledge worker of one sort or another. And if youre a knowledge worker within an organization, heres an essential question you need to ask: Am I being managed, or am I being led? And if in turn youre responsible for the performance of other knowledge workers, you need to ask yourself: Am I managing, or am I leading? Im prompted to ask these questions by Peter Druckers Management Challenges of the 21st Century, one of the most insightful and thought-provoking books Ive ever read, and one I return to regularly, nearly a decade after its publication. The first chapter in this pithy volume, Managements New Paradigms, explodes six deeply flawed assumptions that Drucker saw underlying the discipline and practice of contemporary management. Assumption #3 is There is, or there must be, one right way to manage people, and Drucker uses this as the starting point for an exploration of the characteristics of knowledge workers and why they must be led and not merely managed. An excerpt from pages 17-22 of the Harper Business paperback edition: In no other area are the basic traditional assumptions [about management] held as firmly as in respect to people and their management. And in no other area are they so totally at odds with reality and so totally counterproductive On [the] fundamental assumption that there isor at least should beone and only one right way to manage people rest all the other assumptions about people in organizations and their management. One of these assumptions is that the people who work for an organization re subordinates [F]ewer and fewer people are subordinateseven in fairly low-level jobs. Increasingly they are knowledge workers. And knowledge workers are not subordinates; they are associates. For, once beyond the apprentice stage, knowledge workers must know more about their job than their boss doesor else they are no good at all. In fact, that they know more about their job than anybody else in the organization is part of the definition of knowledge workers We will write a custom essay sample on Peter Drucker on Knowledge Workers, Management and Leadership specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Peter Drucker on Knowledge Workers, Management and Leadership specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Peter Drucker on Knowledge Workers, Management and Leadership specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer To be sure, these associates are subordinates in that they depend on the boss when it comes to being hired or fired, promoted, appraised and so on. But in his or her own job the superior can perform only if these so-called subordinates take responsibility for educating him or her In turn, these subordinates depend on the superior for direction. They depend on the superior to tell them what the score is. Their relationship, in other words, is far more like that between the conductor of an orchestra and the instrumentalist than it is like the traditional superior/subordinate relationship