Drucker Institute

Rick Warren and Minglo Shao are added as Chairs of the Drucker Centennial

• By druckeradmin

The Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, along with the Drucker Institute, announced today that Rick Warren and Minglo Shao have been added as chairs of the Drucker Centennial.

The Drucker Centennial will mark the 100th birthday of Peter F. Drucker, the father of modern management; author of 39 books on organizational behavior, innovation, economy, and society; and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This commemoration and celebration will be crowned by a week of special events at Claremont Graduate University in November 2009 and supplemented by other activities from Fall 2008-2010.

“We are grateful for the active participation of Rick Warren and Minglo Shao in guiding the Drucker Centennial and helping us to celebrate Peter’s 100th birthday,” said Ira Jackson, dean of the Drucker School. “These men are two of the world’s most extraordinary leaders. In giving back to the institutions named for Peter Drucker, who had such a profound influence on their own lives, they are helping to ensure that Peter’s legacy and insights are made relevant for the next century as well, and that Peter’s message gains deep roots and global reach.”

Warren is the pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. It is widely considered one of America’s most influential churches, with about 20,000 people attending weekend services. Warren is the author of The Purpose Driven Life, the best-selling hardback book in American history, with more than 30 million copies sold worldwide. Next week, he will deliver the invocation at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration.

Warren counted Peter Drucker as an important mentor. “His book The Effective Executive is a favorite I re-read every year,” Warren has said. “Long before words like ‘empowerment’” became popular, Peter was telling us that the secret of achieving results is to focus on your strengths, and the strengths of those you work with, rather than focusing on weaknesses.”

Shao, a member of the Drucker Institute Board of Advisors, is the founder and chairman of Bright China Holding Ltd., an investment group that operates in Los Angeles, Hong Kong and major cities around China. Under his leadership, Bright China Group has invested more than $500 million in China, providing employment to more than 10,000 laid-off workers in more than 20 cities.

Donations have also been made in Shannxi to build and operate schools, providing educational opportunities to more than 3,000 students from poverty-stricken farming families in the region.
Through Bright China Holding, Shao heads the Peter F. Drucker Academy, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to researching and teaching Drucker’s management ideas in China. With a dozen locations across the country, thousands of middle and senior managers complete the Drucker Academy’s certificate program each year.

“We are extremely proud to have Rick Warren and Minglo Shao add their support to the Centennial,” said Rick Wartzman, director of the Drucker Institute, a campus-wide resource of CGU. “They certainly fit right in with an incredibly illustrious group of Centennial chairs.” They include:

  • John Bachmann, Senior Partner at Edward Jones, Chairman, the Drucker School Board of Visitors and CGU Trustee
  • Warren Bennis, University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration, University of Southern California
  • Bob Buford, Author, Social Entrepreneur and Chairman of the Drucker Institute
  • John Byrne, Executive Editor, BusinessWeek
  • Jim Collins, Author of Good to Great and Built to Last
  • Doris Drucker, Author and Inventor
  • Rajiv Dutta, Drucker MBA ’82 and Former President of eBay Marketplaces
  • David Gergen, Director of Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership, CNN Commentator and Former White House Advisor
  • Charles Handy, Author of The Age of Unreason and The Elephant and the Flea and Co-Founder of the London Business School
  • Frances Hesselbein, Chairman, Leader to Leader Institute, Former CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
  • Masatoshi Ito, Founder and Honorary Chairman, the Ito-Yokado Group
  • Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration, Harvard University
  • Alan Khazei, CEO, Be The Change Inc. and Co-founder of City Year
  • Wendy Kopp, Founder and CEO, Teach for America
  • A.G. Lafley, Chairman and CEO, Procter & Gamble Co.

Among the activities being planned for the Centennial are a one-day summit with corporate leaders on “The Drucker CEO of the 21st Century”; a Drucker Centennial Public Lecture Series, to be held in conjunction with the Library Foundation of Los Angeles; a series of onstage conversations between Rajiv Dutta and senior executives on “Managing in the 21st Century”; a Centennial marketing symposium that will showcase Drucker’s pioneering contributions to the field; and the production of a new text, “The Drucker Difference,” by Drucker School faculty.

Also planned as part of the Centennial is the launch of a major community-service project in the Inland Empire by CGU students; the premiere of the Drucker Institute documentary “Closing the Responsibility Gap”; a doubling around the world of the number of Drucker Societies-all-volunteer groups that use Drucker’s teachings to bring about positive change in their communities; and a major conference devoted to Drucker’s concept of “management as a liberal art.”

For more information, please visit www.drucker100.com.