Does This Resonate with You?

Management guru Peter F. Drucker passed away last week. He was 95 and considered the father of the study and practice of management. Drucker came to the US from Germany in 1937 and published his first book in 1939. Thirty-four more followed, plus countless articles, columns and essays devoted to business, economics, politics and society.

Drucker coined the phrase knowledge worker back in 1959, when computers were still uncommon and gigantic, used by only the largest organizations. His key insight was that work -- many different kinds of work -- would come to depend on information as the raw material and knowledge as the product. Much of his advice was aimed at helping companies understand how to manage their businesses and workers when the economic output is knowledge instead of steel ingots.

Alas, a side effect of Drucker's influence is what I like to call management by slogan. Back when work was a sweaty, hands-on affair, managers or foremen worked next to their subordinates, and leadership was communicated by the manager's physical presence and spoken words. Now words, more often written than spoken, are the primary tools of leadership.

Drucker helped create the culture of managing with words, and the same week in which he died I received this great example of management by slogan, Resonant Leadership, in an email from Harvard Business School Publishing. An excerpt:

The validity of resonant leadership is unquestioned, but leaders have struggled with how to achieve and sustain resonance amid the relentless demands of work and life."

I, for one, question the validity of resonant leadership. I once had a manager for whom anything good had to "resonate." Did it resonate with the customer? With the staff? With the stockholders? He exhorted us to "make sure this resonates" with whoever it was we were dealing with. When asked what he meant, the explanation usually included the word resonate again.

Words should be full of meaning, not hollow phrases. Sounds in an empty room also resonate. Too many management slogans resonate around us at work and too many of them are hollow and empty.

To make sure your words have meaning, check out this story.

And in the words of Seth Godin: "Beware the CEO blog."

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