Week 20 of 52. Welcome to Drucker Mondays, a 52-week journey through the new book, A Year with Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness, by Joseph A. Maciariello. Each Monday, we'll feature a Drucker fan and his or her favorite snippet from the week's topic. (Subscribe on this page.) Dave Estridge is our guest writer today.
Week 20: Seeing the Future That Has Already Happened—Turmoil in Education
THE BIG IDEA FROM THE BOOK: Author Joseph Maciariello notes that Drucker’s core idea of “focus on strength” (way ahead of the strengths movement) was foundational for any approach to lifelong learning, including education. “In the midst of Drucker’s gloom about our educational system in the U.S., I saw a glimmer of light, and this entry describes that light.”
DAVE ESTRIDGE'S FAVORITE DRUCKER INSIGHTS from Week 20, pages 155-160:
• “In the knowledge society, people have to learn how to learn. Indeed, in the knowledge society subjects may matter less than the students’ capacity to continue learning and their motivation to do so. Knowledge society requires lifelong learning.”
• “Reading is of course the basic skill required in lifelong learning.”
• “In fact, for hundreds of years, if not thousands of years, we have been creating both the motivation for continuing to learn and the needed discipline.”
• “The good teachers of artists do it; the good coaches of athletes do it; so do the good ‘mentors’ in business organizations of which we hear so much these days in the literature of management development.”
• “They lead their students to achievements so great that it surprises the achiever and creates excitement and motivation—especially the motivation for rigorous, disciplined, persistent work and practice that continued learning requires.”
DAVE ESTRIDGE'S COLOR COMMENTARY:
Drucker always challenged the conventional wisdom! He said, “Perhaps the time has come for an entrepreneur to start schools based on what we know about learning, rather than on the old wives’ tales about it that have been handed down through the ages.”
He adds, “The achievement that motivates is doing exceptionally well what one is already good at. Achievement has to be based on the student’s strengths—as has been known for millennia. . . . In fact, finding the student’s strengths and focusing them on achievement is the best definition of the goal of teaching.”
At Christian Community Credit Union, our senior team seeks to leverage the unique God-given strengths of every team member. We use the StrengthsFinder assessment and work hard to delegate tasks based on strengths. We recognize that one learning style doesn’t fit all. As Drucker noted, some of us are readers, others are listeners. Others learn by doing.
THIS WEEK'S QUOTES & COMMENTARY BY DAVE ESTRIDGE:
David Estridge is the Executive Vice President at Christian Community Credit Union in San Dimas, Calif. Dave’s top-five strengths from the Gallup Organization’s StrengthsFinder assessment are: Harmony, Communication, Consistency, Analytical, and Responsibility.
TO-DO TODAY:
• List three ways you can inspire team members to be lifelong learners.
• Become a student of your boss (or board chair) and direct reports by knowing their top-five strengths, from StrengthsFinder, and knowing each person’s preferred learning style.
NEXT MONDAY:
On May 25, 2015, Constantino (Connie) Salios will share his color commentary on Week 21’s topic, “Continuity and Change,” the first of five weeks on “Maintaining Your Organization Through Change.”
Comments