Peter F. Drucker on Practical Leadership

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The New Productivity Challenge

THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE newly dominant groups in the work force, knowledge workers and service workers, will be the biggest and toughest challenge facing managers in the developed countries for decades to come. And serious work on this daunting task has only begun.

Productivity in making and moving things—in manufacturing, farming, mining, construction, and transportation—has increased at an annual rate of 3 to 4 percent compound for the last 125 years—for a 45-fold expansion in overall productivity in the developed countries. On this productivity explosion rests all the increases in these countries ...