> >During this conversation, Peter Drucker said something that really struck me.
> It was along those lines:
>
> >"Historically, a country needed 10 to 20 leaders to be effective, a King,
> a Fieldmarshall, and so on. Typically these people were brought up,
> educated from day one, to become leaders. We're now in a totally different
> situation, where thousands of leaders are necessary in our society. This is
> unprecedented. We do not know how to teach people to become leaders if we
> don't start at the most tender age..."
>
> Did Peter say how people of any age are taught how to be leaders? What was the
> basis of his belief that one must be brought up to be a leader? To me this
> sounds to "undemocratic" it frightens me as to what the consequences might be.
> Hitler was a leader but not one I would choose to lead me. Was he brought up
> to be a leader?
>
> Rose
Let me come up with some untestable attributions (unless we ask Peter
Drucker himself)...
I guess Drucker's message is mostly in the second part of what I freely
quoted. I believe he simply meant that our leadership needs are by very
far a lot greater today than they have been in the past. A system existed
that was mostly sufficient to produce enough leaders, and it took
centuries, milleniums to build that system (which was not perfect). In a
matter of a few years, that system became insufficient, and we still
haven't found something to do the work. To me, an excellent illustration
of this is the low popularity of governments all over the (western?)
world... Another illustration would be all the energy we're putting today
to develop more leaders and to discuss how to teach leadership...
Let me also comment on your reference to Hitler. A lot of people in
Germany would not have chosen Hitler as a leader if they had known...
Cheerz,
Christian
--Christian Giroux <lmccgir@LMC.Ericsson.SE>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>