Drucker Day 2016: Leadership Arc

What a day!

Hundreds of attendees gathered at CGU Saturday to celebrate the timeless vision of the individual widely considered the father of modern management, with distinguished executives and Drucker School faculty sharing how they use Peter Drucker’s principles for self, team, and organizational management to positively impact society,

Drucker Day 2016, with its Leadership Arc: Self to Society theme, showcased a compelling slate of speakers who shared their insights into management and the spectrum of the leadership experience—from the micro-level of individuals to the macro-level of companies, organizations, and their impact on society at large.

Tom Horan, the Henry Y. Hwang dean of the Drucker School, opened the daylong event with welcoming remarks and an update on the programs and events the school is offering this fall. In addition to Drucker Day itself, Horan described the school’s expansion to a global stage with a recent forum on creativity and innovation in Japan, a new “game lab” that will engage a student team this spring in designing a video game with mentors from Pokémon and the industry’s other leading companies; and a continuing effort to capture Peter Drucker’s many management insights into “leadership arcs” applicable to the individual, corporate, and societal level.

“Our school is a business; our business is education,” Horan told the audience. “Our goal is not just to create a customer, but to keep a customer, too, by continuing to deliver value.”

Drucker Day 2016 attracted media attention, including a high-profile write-up in the Daily Bulletin.

A major keynote speaker was Howard Behar, former president of Starbucks Coffee International.

“The idea of ‘serving people’ is simple, sure, and putting that into practice daily for a corporation means thinking about the effect of every decision on your people, on the people they are serving,” said Behar, who was president of Starbucks when it grew from a 20-store regional company to a global corporation. “Every time we made a big mistake when I was at Starbucks, it was because we forgot that. We made unilateral decisions that forgot how important even the littlest things are to your employees, to your customers.”

Other Drucker Day 2016 speakers included:

• Jeremy Hunter, Drucker associate professor of practice and founding director of the Executive Mind Leadership Institute, discussed “Mindfulness and Leadership.”

“How can you manage others if you can’t manage yourself?” Hunter asked. “. . . We’re an attention-illiterate society. People need to realize that how you invest your attention, moment by moment, adds up to what your life is.”

• Jenny Darroch, Drucker professor of innovation, entrepreneurship, and marketing; and Drucker alumnus John Janclaes (MAM, 2003), president and CEO of Partners Federal Credit Union, spoke on “Purposeful Organizations.”

“When we think of practicing management as a liberal art, it means to focus on managing human potential,” Darroch said.

• Drucker alumnus Bridgette Bell-McAdoo (EMBA, 2010), director of sustainability for KFC Global, and CGU Trustee Virgil Roberts, founder and managing partner at Bobbitt & Roberts, spoke on finding “inspiration at the critical intersection of organizational purpose and social responsibility.”

• Drucker Professors Bernie Jaworski, the Peter F. Drucker Chair in Management and the Liberal Arts, Katharina Pick closed the event with an informal conversation about how to apply the Drucker Leadership Arc to attendees’ personal and professional lives.

Throughout Drucker Day 2016, Drucker faculty and invited guests were flush with insights and inspiration. Alumnus Janclaes shared his own Drucker experience as advice to current students.

“I remember telling Professor Jay Prag in a class once, ‘One day, I’m going to be the one who has to decide on buying a mainframe or leasing it. Can you help me?’ Ask those questions now. Build your toolbox before you leave. Do as much as you can. You’ve got a lot of resources here.”