Concepts
Here are some of the concepts Drucker put into words, which are the stepping stones for ideas:
--People are the key to any organization. Leaders who consider people a cost rather than a resource are in trouble.
--Institutions of yesteryear were based on property and power-churches, merchant guilds, knights, kingdoms, and so on. Today, institutions-businesses, unions, universities, nonprofits, and hospitals-exist based on their ability to function, to provide a service or product. That's why each must concentrate on what only it can do.
--Entrepreneurship ("creative destruction" in the words of Joseph Schumpeter, a Drucker's favorite) is central to a free society. "All great change in business has come from outside the firm, not inside."
--Knowledge workers.
--There is no business without a customer.
--Manage by objectives.
--Promote people based on performance, not potential.
--Profits are not the purpose of a business, but a limiting factor. Profit is not the explanation, cause, or rationale of business behavior and decisions, but rather the test of their validity. (Source: The Essential Drucker, HarperCollins)
--Attracting and holding talent are the two central tasks of management.

Nonprofits
Drucker spent as much time on nonprofits as he did on for-profit organizations. His article in the July-August 1989 entitled, "What Business Can Learn from Nonprofits," is still a popular reprint (HBR #89404). This is the opening sentence: "The Girl Scouts, the Red Cross, the pastoral churches-our nonprofit organizations-are becoming America's management leaders."

The second sentence is: "In two areas, strategy and the effectiveness of the board, they are practicing what most American businesses only preach." Later on he adds: "...most of them have learned that nonprofits need management even more than business does, precisely because they [nonprofits] lack the discipline of the bottom line."

Looking ahead, Drucker made this observation: "Nonprofits used to say, 'We don't pay volunteers so we cannot make demands upon them.' Now they are more likely to say, 'Volunteers must get far greater satisfaction from their accomplishments and make a greater contribution precisely because they do not get a paycheck."

And later: "...they want to be knowledge workers in the jobs in which they contribute to society-that is, their volunteer work..... [nonprofits] have to offer meaningful achievement.."

Finally, "This move from nonpaid volunteer to unpaid professional may be the most important development in American society today."

For-Profits
In the 1980s, Drucker became one of the earliest critics of business managements. According to Business Week Drucker no longer saw the modern corporation as the ideal space to create community. "In fact he saw the opposite: a place where self-interest had triumphed over the egalitarian principles he long championed."

In the same period, he met with Jack Welch who had recently become CEO of General Electric. Drucker posed two questions: "If you weren't already in a business (and GE was in many businesses), would you enter it today?" And: "If the answer is no, what are you going to do about it?" It is said that these questions moved Welch toward one of the greatest corporate transformations in history. Strategic planning, as we know it today, was one product of that transformation.

Jim Collins, author of "Good to Great," says in a November 28, Business Week cover-story tribute to Drucker: "Drucker never forgot his own teaching: Ask not what you can achieve but what you can contribute. At age 85, when asked which of his 26 books he was most proud of, Drucker responded: 'The next one.' "