Homage and Farewell to a Great Man

Good morning, Live Better than a Billionaire-a-Holics!

Are you feeling motivated this morning? I certainly hope so. I know that I am!

This morning, I come to praise Peter Ferdinand Drucker, the greatest person I ever met, and an even better friend and mentor to me.

Peter died on November 11, 2005 at his home in Claremont, California. He was 95. If you want to know more details of his life, I suggest you read Barnaby Feder's obituary in The New York Times of November 12, 2005 (see http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/12/business/12drucker.html?th&emc=th/).

I'm sure that Peter is with God now. He was a committed Christian all of his life and worked hard to assist Christian leaders to strengthen their churches.

I cannot remember reading a good book about business, non-profit organizations, leadership or management that did not owe a great debt to Peter's many wonderful books. His influence has become so pervasive that most people don't even recognize the effect he has had on their writing and thinking.

Chances are that you won't read all of Peter's amazing books. But you should read as many of them as you can. He said it first and usually best. Although his native language was German (Peter was born in Austria), he wrote English with a beautiful felicity that soared beyond others in what most people view as a field laden with meaningless jargon and bad grammar. I published a list of his essential books on business model innovation which you can read at http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/218Q4HYES0HD4/104-5889592-2919129

One of my books, The Ultimate Competitive Advantage, contains a description of how Peter's life is an example of successful business model innovation. You can read about that aspect of his wonderful career on pages 232-235 in that book.

Our second book, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, was dedicated to Peter.

I first met Peter in the early 1970s. I had been reading his books since I graduated from school and used them to guide my work in corporate strategy. Noticing that he would be giving a lecture followed by questions and answers in New York, I traveled to the city for the session. I came loaded with a question: "What one measure is best to use in improving corporate performance?" I hoped that Peter would agree with my ideas, and I could use his authority to persuade everyone else. I had a chance to ask my question, and Peter paused before drilling me with, "My dear sir, you obviously know nothing. There is no single measure of corporate performance that is any good. Use them all and try to develop new ones and each will teach you something you need to know." That lesson was one I have sought to follow throughout my career ever since. Every success I've had can be traced back to that answer of Peter's. A disguised version of this story appears in The 2,000 Percent Solution on page 132.

Years later, I was heading an effort to develop the next generation of next practices for the most effective American corporations. My clients suggested that we have an academic advisor to check on how we were pursuing our work. I suggested Peter and everyone was enthusiastic.

I wrote Peter a letter in 1992 at Claremont College, where he was then teaching both undergraduates and executive learners, recounting that experience in New York, my current issues and a desire to work with him. A couple of weeks later, someone raced into my office and breathlessly announced that Peter Drucker was on the phone. He began by telling me he appreciated my letter and I was fortunate that he was so susceptible to flattery. He would, indeed assist us.

From that beginning, I flew to California one to three times a year to spend part of a day with Peter through 1999. After that time, his health caused him to cut back on consulting and he even had to decline even luncheon invitations. But we spoke from time to time and corresponded until the last two years.

Many wonderful things resulted from these sessions. He developed an agenda of what I should focus on. He always felt I try to do too much (and I still have that fault). But he also expanded my agenda in unexpected ways. He was the driving force behind all of my book writing and my more recent articles. Peter felt strongly that my work was needed by millions, and he wasn't going to be satisfied until millions were using these innovations such as the 2,000 percent solution process. He encouraged me to write workbooks to explain how to implement the processes I have designed such as my revision to the capital asset pricing model. My ten year study of CEO best practices came from these discussions.

Peter helped me to see myself more objectively and to tell what's important from what isn't.

But at a human level, he touched me even more deeply. We never spoke without his asking about everything that was going on in my life, each member of my family and exclaiming how happy he was to hear that my children were doing well. Sometimes we would spend more time talking about our families than we did speaking about business processes and theories.

He went beyond that to make me feel deeply appreciated. It was a wonderful gift.

There was another lesson in these sessions. Peter was essentially stone deaf. He had large hearing aids and constantly fiddled with them. But he couldn't hear us a good part of the time. It was heart-breaking to see him struggle to catch what we were saying. We learned to be brief, loud and to enunciate clearly. Most peoples' vanities would have kept them from exposing themselves in this way. But Peter's honest desire to help drove him on.

At lunch, we would exit his living room and head for Rillo's, his favorite local restaurant. There he would regale us with even more stories and the staff would approach like to an emperor. A few times we went to the faculty club at Claremont, and the sense of awe in the room was even deeper.

There's a section about Peter's consulting in Jack Beatty's book, The World According to Peter Drucker, which describes some of our sessions.

But Peter was more than a mentor. He was a force. When we wrote The 2,000 Percent Solution, he painstakingly went through every page and made copious notes on what to change. We did everything he asked and looked forward to debriefing about the experience in the fall of 1998. When we arrived, he started off by telling us about several major additional changes he wanted. But the book was already done and due to be printed in early November. Peter waved that off. He said to call my publisher and tell her that he insisted that the changes be made. I called her later that day, and she quickly agreed. I felt like a magic genie had just granted me one wish.

When our company was going to have its 20th anniversary, we asked Peter if he would call in to say a few words. He declined because he felt like he wouldn't do a good job. But he offered to shoot a greeting for the group if I would come to California and appear with him. I am so thrilled that he did that for me. I can see the two of us talking and laughing together on the video whenever I want. We play that greeting occasionally for our clients, and they never fail to be moved. They ask me how the script was prepared. I tell them that Peter had five words on a yellow pad, and we only did one take. He was perfect with his ad lib performance. But it looked like a team had worked for weeks to put it together.

One of the worst kept secrets in the world was that Peter didn't charge his non-profit clients. And they were half of his consulting practice. He required that they arrive with a check made out for the full amount of the session. At the end of the day, he would take the check and gleefully tear it up. Only Peter would do that. He wanted the clients to pay attention, and didn't feel like they would unless they thought that they were (or might be) paying for the day.

Peter also shared astonishing, little-known facts about consulting engagements he had worked on. I always assumed that these were not to be repeated, but his assessment of the young Jack Welch was priceless!

Peter could be pretty outspoken in his views. We got onto the subject of high technology innovation one day, and Peter observed that none of the CEOs in the field made any difference whatsoever. When we cautiously mentioned Bill Gates, Peter snorted and called Gates a celebrity . . . not an innovator. When we mildly protested, Peter went on to say that Gates' main value was as a rich person. He then asked us if we knew what Lord Keynes had had to say about rich people. We didn't and Peter supplied the quote about the purpose of the rich being to lose their money to everyone else. He laughed heartily. That last line seems apropos for finishing this homage to Peter.

Peter will always be the Pole Star for me in guiding me forward to make my contributions. God bless you, Peter!

Can a billionaire do any better? I doubt it.

I don't know of any billionaires who have as much character as Peter did in his little finger. Peter knew that chasing money was a waste of time. Helping people was what it was all about. And his heart was filled with love for everyone.

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N.B. As you can tell, I'm experimenting with color. Let me know what you like and what I should change about my use of color. Many thanks to Linda Grace for her suggestions which I am following!

Please let me know what else you would like to learn, and I'll do my best to help in future blog entries.

Here are some upcoming subjects:

Tomorrow, let's head to Pro Player Stadium for a close look at how to enjoy football South Florida style!

Sunday, let's consider how best to expand your spiritual library and readings.

On Monday, we'll consider better ways to pick out a good book.

Tuesday, let's look at how to run a short meeting better than a billionaire.

On Wednesday, you and I will look at how non-billionaires can do more than billionaires to solve some of the world's most difficult problems.

If you are new to this blog, be sure to check out the updated table of contents entry that I posted on November 16. The table of contents will help you find earlier entries that may be of interest. I'll update this table of contents every week or so for your convenience.

August 31 was the most frequently read blog entry to date. Be sure to check it out!

Thanks so much for your support of this blog. I'm delighted that so many tens of thousands of people have made this blog part of their regular reading habit!

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Check out the latest index at http://livebetterthanabillionaireon5dollars.blogspot.com/2005/11/latest-table-of-contents-to-this-blogs_16.html to pick out your choice.

Thank you to my many friends, students, clients and blog readers who are spreading the good word about this blog.

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Remember to also visit

Live Spiritually Better than a Billionaire at http://livespirituallybetterthanabillionaire.blogspot.com/,

Be More Successful than a Billionaire at http://bemoresuccessfulthanabillionaire.blogspot.com/,

Create Your Own 2,000 Percent Solutions at
http://2000percentsolutions.blogspot.com/,

Enjoy Mansions Better than a Billionaire at http://enjoymansionsbetterthanabillionaire.blogspot.com/,

Enjoy Football Better than a Billionaire at http://enjoyfootballbetterthanabillionaire.blogspot.com/ and

Be a World Hero Better than a Billionaire at http://beaworldherobetterthanabillionaire.blogspot.com/.

I offer individual on-line tutorials and in-person seminars on living better than a billionaire on five dollars extra a day, creating 2,000 percent solutions (20 times the results with the same effort), developing more profitable business models and designing strategies that work regardless of the business environment. For information, contact me at ultimatecompetitiveadvantage@yahoo.com.

I am available to you as a speaker on these subjects. You can find my background at http://livebetterthanabillionaireon5dollars.blogspot.com/2005_08_30_livebetterthanabillionaireon5dollars_archive.html/.

May God bless you.

Donald W. Mitchell, Your Dream Concierge

Copyright 2005 Donald W. Mitchell