A Class with Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World’s Greatest Management Teacher

Chapter Eighteen. How to Motivate the Knowledge Worker

Drucker was very sensitive to the role and work of the worker. As he saw it, companies were increasingly dependent on the “knowledge worker,” a term he had created some years earlier to denote the new worker, who worked not primarily physically with his body doing physical labor, but with his mind. However, to Peter, all workers were of significant actual and potential value to the firm. He resented it when management talked of the cost of labor. And he didn’t like to think of managing workers, either, although at times he used both of these terms. To Peter, labor was not an expense; labor was added value, a resource, potentially the greatest resource that an organization possessed. Managers ...