In Managing Oneself, the flagship title in the Peter F. Drucker Executive Management Series, trainees get a unique historical insight into the groundbreaking changes in worker tasks and productivity.  For thousands of years, the economy was based almost exclusively on manual work such as farming, craftsmanship, and domestic service.  But within the last few decades, knowledge work has become the primary economic focus.  In fact, knowledge workers now account for almost half of the U.S. workforce.  This means that there have been major changes in the way work is performed.  Knowledge workers face new and different challenges. 

People Decisions, part of the Peter F. Drucker Executive Management Series on Managing Oneself and Others, is based on the premise that there are no more important decisions within an organization than people decisions: staffing jobs, promoting people, letting them go, and so on.  The centerpiece of the course is the five decision steps and the five ground rules of making people decisions.  When taken together, these principles help make people decisions successful almost every time, as illustrated throughout the program by Peter Drucker’s colorful anecdotes and personal experiences.

Managing the Boss, part of the Peter F. Drucker Executive Management Series on Managing Oneself and Others, is based on the idea that virtually everybody has a boss.  In fact, most people have more than one; and the trend is for knowledge workers to have an increasing number of bosses.  Most people consider their bosses to be the key people in deciding salaries and promotions.  But as Peter Drucker explains in this course, a boss is also the key for a knowledge worker’s effectiveness.  In this course, you will learn the seven keys to managing your boss: making a “boss list,” exchanging performance information with each boss, enabling each boss to perform, playing to each boss’s strengths, keeping each boss informed, protecting each boss from surprises, and never underrating a boss.

Effective Decision Making, part of the Peter F. Drucker Executive Management Series on Managing Oneself and Others, examines ways to minimize the risks inherent in decision making.  Every decision is risky: it is a commitment of present resources to an unknown future.  But the risk can be minimized by following the seven elements of effective decision making: determining if a decision is necessary, classifying the problem, defining the problem, deciding on what is right, getting others to buy the decision, building action into the decision, and testing the decision against actual results.

Knowledge Worker Productivity, part of the Peter F. Drucker Executive Management Series on Managing Oneself and Others, takes a unique look at the progression of worker productivity.  At the start of the twentieth century, manual workers accounted for more than 90 percent of the U.S. population.  But by the end of the century, that figure had fallen to 20 percent.  Virtually nonexistent only 100 years ago, knowledge workers now make up the largest slice, 40 percent, of the American workforce.  But this rise in the number of knowledge workers has brought about special challenges for today’s workforce managers and executives.  With help of Peter Drucker’s colorful anecdotes and personal observations, this course tackles these challenges through the seven steps to improving knowledge worker productivity: defining the task, focusing on the task, defining results, defining quality, granting autonomy, demanding accountability, and building continuous learning and teaching into tasks.  This program has been approved for 1 recertification credit hour towards PHR and SPHR recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute.

Register for this EWI Online Suite