Change Agents

IT Needs To Do More

Peter Drucker changed how people think about management, coining concepts such as "knowledge worker" that are now part of our lives. Drucker, who died Nov. 11, shaped countless IT business leaders through his dozens of books. Their ranks include people as influential as Intel co-founder Andrew Grove, who cites the Druckerism of not promoting based on potential. "Promote on performance, which you can assess," Drucker urged. This sentence had "a pervasive and lasting influence on promotion decisions," Grove said in a statement.

Drucker didn't let IT off the hook. "Information technology is beginning to supply the information we need for business decisions," Drucker said in a broadcast two years ago at a Delphi Group conference. However, "it provides nothing of use about the outside business environment." Living up to Drucker's challenges would be fitting tribute to the man who invented the study of management.

--Marianne Kolbasuk McGee