IN REMEMBRANCE; PETER DRUCKER: 1909-2005 GAUTAM CHIKERMANE
Drucker was so young, so vibrant, so full of new ideas. How could he age, leave alone die? But on November 11, eight days before he turned 96, he passed away, leaving behind a work that will live on till civilisations do. It will influence more thinkers and leaders than any other single individual’s work. Best known as the ‘father of management’, he had become a subject, a course, if not a field, in himself. Something like Plato, Keynes or Ved Vyasa. His work sweeps from history to art, finance to technology, organisations to people. All of which will continue to breath life into ideas.
As someone who has been following management and organisational behaviour in particular and seeking the unseen in general, I can say without batting an eyelid that even at 95, Drucker was the youngest business, management, societal and economic thinker alive. And the youngest futurist, even though he claimed not to be one. But what he wrote, the ideas he nourished were pretty much like looking into a reverse rear view mirror that showed a crystal-clear future. How else could he have written books like The Post-Capitalist Society (1993) and articles like ‘The future that has already happened’?
The one hallmark of the man has been his being way ahead in observing, capturing, analysing new trends and fresh ideas and translating them into insights that are digestible, touchable by the rest of us. I feel a dull aching in my heart, an uneasy vacuum when I realise that this consultant’s consultant, this guru’s guru, this man who has directly influenced the likes of Churchill and Welch, the 20th century’s most influential philosopher has gone without leaving an intellectual heir. He will rest in peace, but his ideas will continue to drive the rest of us. The Indian Express Monday, November 14, 2005
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