Peter Drucker

Drucker was voted as the Guru of Gurus, in a survey of Management thinkers all over the world. He truly is the patriarch of all management experts. Died recently in his 90s. He was more of a philosopher than a mgmt guru. Infact he also wrote few fictional books, in addition to stuff on economics, politics, society and of course management. He is credited with foreseeing a lot of trends in society and management. Like "Knowledge worker", customer-centric approach, CSR(Corporate Social Responsibility), MBO (Mgmt By objectives) etc.

There were a few books by him in the library, always wanted to read one, I had read a few essays by him in sundry journals earlier. Luckily I chanced to see the book "Essential Drucker" when I was just glancing through the shelves in the lib. So in this one book, I found a condensed collection of Drucker's varied writings. And it really was a good read, as he goes on dissecting management as a discipline.The purpose of business according to him is to "Create a Customer" and that primarily it is an organ of society, and the two basic functions of a business are marketing and innovation. He did not believe in the doctrine of profit maximization, according to him, profit is important and an essential part of keeping a business up and running, an indicator of the viability of the idea, but it is not the purpose.
In this book he also dwells a lot on individuals, how the focus should be on contribution, rather
than just on the role or profile. And how one needs to be more productive, he even goes into effective time-management.

I would suggest anyone interested in management to go through it, its an easy read. Simplistic language, instructive, but not preachy.