ビジネス書をよく読むのですが、まだDrucker氏の本を一冊も読んだことがなかったので、本書を読んでみました。1940年代から1990年代に書かれた同氏の数多く著作からエッセンスを抜き出したような本で、同氏のマネジメント論を広く（浅く？）知ることができるようになっております。
文章や語彙が私にとっては少々難しく、読むのに時間がかかりましたが、事例が豊富なので、最後まで飽きずに読み通すことができました。また、日本のことや、事例としてソニーやホンダといった会社も出てくるので、興味深く読むことができました。２６の章に分かれているのも、細かく区切りをつけながら読むことができて良かったです。
Drucker氏のマネジメント論の「全体像」を把握する為の本なので、少々物足りなく感じる時もありますが、「なるほどなぁ…」「気をつけたいなぁ…」と思う箇所が沢山ありました。いくつか挙げてみますと…
1. Management as social function and liberal art より
Not to innovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing organizations. Not to know how to manage is the single largst reason for the failure of new ventures.
→勤め先について言えば前者に注意しないと。ただ、新規事業については後者か…
Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.
→「個々人の弱みを無意味にする」というのが大切かと思います。
5. Social impacts and social problems より
Healthy businesses require a healthy, or at least a functioning, society. The health of the community is a prerequisite for successful and growing business.
→当たり前のことなのですが、ついつい忘れがち。ＣＳＲの根底にある考えでしょうか。
8. Management by objectives and self-control より
The hierarchical structure of management aggravates the danger. What the "boss" does and say, his most casual remarks, habits, even mannerisms, tend to appear to subordinates as calculated, planned, and meaningful.
→どのようなレベルであれ、リーダーが常に意識しなければならないこと。一方的なコミュニケーションに陥っていないか、常に謙虚な検証が必要。
To "control" everything is to control nothing. And to attempt to control the irrelevant always misdirects.
→「木を見て森を見ず」ということでしょうか。審査部門として陥りがちなので、要注意。
9. Picking people - the basic rules より
Usually every man who was good at this task had serious weaknesses in other areas.
→他人もそうだし、自分もそう。
One executive's judgment alone is worthless. Because all of us have first impressions, prejudices, likes, and dislikes, we need to listen to what other people think.
→これも、あらゆるレベルのリーダーが常に意識しなければならないこと。常に謙虚な姿勢で。
14. Focus on contribution より
The effective person focuses on contribution. He looks up from his work and outward toward goals. He asks, "What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?"
→"What can I contribute?"という問いかけを、常にしていきたいと思いました。
The most common cause of failure is inability or unwillingness to change with the demands of a new positon. The knowledge worker who keeps on doing what he has done successfully before he moved is almost bound to fail.
→なかなか耳の痛い話ですが、その通りなんでしょうね。
15. Know your strengths and values より
Waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. Concentration should be on areas of high competence and high skill. It takes far more energy and far more work to improve from incompetence to low mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.
→「苦手分野を克服しなくては」と考えがちですが、それは非効率なのか…意外でした。
16. Know your time より
Actually, all one has to do is to learn to say no if an activity contributes nothing to one's own organization, to oneself, or to the organization for which it is to be performed.
→断る勇気が必要。
But above all, meetings have to be the exception rather than the rule. An organization in which everybody meets all the time is an organization in which no one gets anything done.
→これも耳の痛い話ですが、気をつけないと…
Even one quarter of the working day, if consolidated in large time units, is usually enough to get the important things done. But the three quarters of the working day are useless if it is only available as fifteen minutes here or half an hour there.
→忘れがちですがとても大事なこと。「電話」や「メールのお知らせ」でいちいち中断されていては、まともな仕事ができないのは当たり前。
17. Effective decisions より
Whenever one has to judge, one must have alternatives among which to choose. A judgment in which one can only say yes or no is no judgment at all.
→対案は、しっかり用意しておかないとなぁ…
21. The second half of your life より
For where there is success, there has to be failure. And then it is vitally important for the individual - but equally for the individual's family - that there be an area in which the individual contributes, makes a difference, and is somebody. That means having a second area, whether a second career, a parallel career, a social venture, a serious outside interest, anything offering an opportunity for being a leader, for being respected, for being a success.
→組織としてではなく、個人として大事なこと。将来的に、ますます大切になってくる観点だと思います。
24. The coming of entrepreneurial society より
They can no longer assume that what they have learned as children and youngsters will be the "foundation" for the rest of their lives. It will be the "launching pad" - the place to take off from rather than the place to build on and to rest on.
→一生、学び続けて、変わり続けなくてはならない、ということでしょうか。
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また、全体を通して、「お客様（customer）を中心に」という考えが、随所に、繰り返し出てきたのが印象的でした。
Finally, the single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that results exist only on the outside. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.
It is the customer who determines what a business is. It is the customer alone whose willingness to pay for a good or for a service converts economic resources into wealth, things into goods.
Business are not paid to reform customers, They are paid to satisfy customers.
All the strategies discussed in this section have one thing in common. They create a customer - and that is the ultimate purpose of a business, indeed, of economic activity.
But there are no "irrational customers." As an old saying has it, There are only lazy manufacturers. The customer has to be assumed to be rational. His or her reality, however, is usually quite different from that of the manufacturer.
It also means that the center of gravity, and the center of power, will be the customer. In the last thirty years, the center of power has shifted from the supplier, the manufacturer, to the distributor. In the next thirty years, it will certainly shift to the customer - for the simple reason that the customer now has full access to information worldwide.
本書には、最近のビジネス書に書かれていることが沢山書かれており、Drucker氏の考えは現在のマネジメント論の基礎になっているのだなぁ…としみじみ思いました。少々読みにくいかもしれませんが、一読の価値のある本だと思います。
