A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

SELF-CONFIDENCE MUST BE BUILT STEP-BY-STEP ■ 31
The Arrow didn’t have a tape system, and so I would take a portable
tape player <strong>with</strong> me, put it on the passenger seat, and run it from there. It
was not stereo, but that didn’t matter because I listened mostly to tapes on
business or self improvement. I thought I could use a little of both, especially
the latter. Unfortunately, the tape in my recorder kept sticking. I
would take it out and pound it against my right leg, reinsert it, and turn
the player on again. It would play for a short time, and then stick again. I
was getting more and more frustrated and my leg was getting sore.
If that weren’t enough, I ran into a traffic jam on the freeway and I arrived
at Claremont late for class. Then I couldn’t find a parking place close to
Harper Hall. I finally found something, but it was several blocks away. I tentatively
stuck my head in the classroom to see if I could sneak in unobserved.
Not a chance. <strong>Drucker</strong> was already sans jacket, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened,
and lecturing. I usually sat right up front, but being late, all the front
row seats were taken. I nodded to Peter and found something at the back of
the room. At that precise moment, I heard one of my classmates ask, “So,
Dr. <strong>Drucker</strong>, how did you happen to become a management consultant?”
By then, I had learned that Peter didn’t care for titles. He liked to be
called “Peter.” My impression was that he especially didn’t like the title
“doctor.” I don’t know why that was. In addition to his many honorary
doctorates, he had a doctorate in International Law from the University of
Frankfurt. He told us that he had selected law because it was the easiest
doctorate to obtain. Whether this was true or not, I don’t know. It was
equally unclear what Peter thought of management consultants, although,
of course, he was reputed to be the world’s preeminent consultant in the
management field.
There are a lot of books published on management consulting today. In
fact, I wrote one (How To Make It Big as a Consultant, AMACOM, 1985,
1991, 2001). However, this was not always so. In the 1970’s, management
consulting was just becoming popular in the business community and
there was a great deal of interest in the subject. There was a considerable
mystique about what management consultants did and how they operated.
Peter had consulted for some of the largest corporations in the world,
including General Motors. His project <strong>with</strong> General Motors, actually a
study, was the basis of his book, Concept of the Corporation, which helped
to establish him as the foremost thinker in the field of management. So
whatever Peter was lecturing on that led to this question, the question was
probably honestly, if somewhat brashly, asked by my classmate. In any case,