A Class with Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World's Greatest Management Teacher

by William A. Cohen

Book Overview

From 1975 to 1979, author William Cohen studied under one of the greatest management educators and thought-leaders of all time: Peter Drucker. What Drucker taught him literally changed his life. Now,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814409199
• ISBN13: 9780814409190
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: AMACOM/American Management Association
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 17 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

What Peter Drucker taught his students

William Cohen studied with management guru Peter Drucker while working toward his Ph.D. in executive management at Claremont Graduate School (now the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management). The lessons he learned from Drucker, he says, were life-changing, and in this book he aims to transmit to his readers the great man's wisdom. In fact, Drucker took a somewhat different approach with his students from the one in his books and articles. Thus, Cohen builds upon and reinterprets many of Drucker's insights and concepts. getAbstract particularly recommends this book to managers who are already Drucker fans and want to learn more - the book is really more like a CD of unreleased recordings by a great artist of the past than like an album of covers by a lesser artist.

A look at Drucker in the classroom from one of his students

Peter Drucker is revered as a management guru and his books and articles have been a mainstay in business reading for decades. Even if you have read some of his books, don't you think you should read more? But maybe you have read everything and wish there was something more. We see similar market hunger from the devotees of artists and musicians who have died. These folks look for anything not released or some draft versions of works. William Cohen was working on his executive Ph.D. at Claremont when he studied with Drucker. While most of us know Drucker from his writings, and a much smaller number from presentations, a minuscule number of people were able to sit in his classrooms. Cohen has combed his notes and recollections to put together 19 chapters of what it was like to study with Drucker as a student and the lessons he learned from him. It is an interesting enough book and Cohen does make contributions of his own. Just don't mistake this for a book BY Drucker and you will be just fine. While I would recommend starting with Drucker's classic works, this is a good supplement to the great man's direct offerings for those who want even more. Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

Quick and Easy Education

I became an entrepreneur and business owner after I graduated school, so I never took business courses - especially at the graduate level. My customers have taught me some, I had some mentors and family advice, but mostly I have learned from by either making mistakes or having successes in my stores. And I am a firm believer in learning from books. Business books seem to be about 80-20. 80% stinkers, 20% valuable. And then every so often that 20% turns out to have real gem. This book from Dr Cohen is a gem, with a lot of good, practical advice I can apply immediately to improve my bottom line. If you believe in continuing your business education with books, get this one. The advice is Peter Drucker's, and Dr Cohen fully credits the ideas to him, but I credit Dr Cohen for making these lessons readable, understandable, and easy to apply. Bravo!

Any business library needs A CLASS WITH DRUCKER.

Author William A. Cohen was a struggling young Air Force officer with no academic experience when he entered Drucker's PhD program in management, becoming the first graduate of Drucker's doctoral program. He used his newfound insights to further career and to gain a deeper insight into Drucker's approach and personality: A CLASS WITH DRUCKER reflects his experiences, expanding upon Drucker's lessons, revealing the teacher's personality through personal anecdotes, and providing fine tips on how Drucker's management tools continue to be applied in everyday business circles. Any business library needs A CLASS WITH DRUCKER.

One student's fond memories of "The Master of Modern Management"

Peter Drucker was William Cohen's professor "in probably the first executive PhD program in management in academic history" from 1975 until 1979 and Cohen was the first graduate of this program at Claremont Graduate School. His classes with Drucker met once a week, beginning at 4:30 PM and resumed after a dinner break, continuing until at least 10 PM but sometimes later. These were lecture courses without use of notes but Drucker, a master of the Socratic method of teaching, encouraged Q & A exchanges with students. ("In answering a question he might go off in an unexpected direction which seemingly had nothing to do with the question asked. Before you knew it, he was giving a lecture within a lecture.") He attracted so many students that his classes met in the largest room available. He used the same textbook for all his classes (Management: Tasks, Responsibilities and Practices) and never used a teaching assistant to grade for him. During the dinner break, instructors and students from various classes gathered at an open bar and then dinner in the Faculty Club. Cohen occasionally found himself seated with a group that included Drucker. What we have in this volume is a wealth of Cohen's memories of those years as a student at Claremont Graduate School, his reflections on what he learned from Peter Drucker, and discussions of how those lessons were then applied in his personal life and especially in his career. "I have tried to come close to capturing his actual words, but in any case, I believe I achieved the spirit of what he said and how he said it. My aim is to put the reader in the classroom as if he were there with me at the time hearing Drucker and participating in every interaction I had with him." Cohen succeeds brilliantly in achieving these and other objectives. If there were a business counterpart to the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Peter Drucker would be among those selected for such an honor. (Who else? That's an interesting question but the whole idea would no doubt have appalled Drucker.) Of special interest to me is what I learned about his teaching style. Cohen obviously accumulated an abundance of notes, old papers, and other sources of information from or about his several years of their association with "The Father of Modern Management." As Cohen repeatedly suggests, Drucker had a unique talent for "cutting right to the heart of the [given] issue." Among the several lessons that Cohen learned and shares, these are the ones that caught my eye: "The first task of any business management is to decide what business it was in." "What everyone `knows' is frequently wrong." "Outstanding performance is inconsistent with fear of failure." "Selling and marketing are neither synonymous nor complementary. One could consider them adversarial in some cases. There is no doubt that if marketing were done perfectly, selling, in the actual sense of the word, would be unnecessary." "The first systematic book on leadership [i.e. The