A Year with Peter Drucker - 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness

Week 5

Management Rooted in the Nature of Reality

Introduction

As you will see in this entry, Peter Drucker believed that Cyrus the Great, in the fourth century B.C., was one of the outstanding leaders of all time, no doubt because of his integrity (Hedrick, Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great, p. xiv), and that his biography, Cyropaedia by Xenophon, is one of the best books on leadership. Drucker also believed Harry S. Truman was one of the most effective presidents of the United States.⁸ What did these two leaders have in common? First, Cyrus the Great was one of Truman’s heroes (McCullough, Truman, p. 58). Second, Truman thought that his recognition of Israel immediately after the United Nations had granted it statehood earned him the title ...