Articles by William Cohen, Ph.D.

Many Americans were appalled in the 1960s when youth suddenly and without warning rebelled against the beliefs and morals of the “Greatest Generation” and not only embraced drugs, free sex, communal living, and stripping naked to partake in the ritual which came to be known as “streaking,” but rejected other of their parents’ most sacred values. Many thought that...Full Article »

Drucker discovered that all executives needed to understand and apply the correct principles of marketing research in HR, manufacturing, sales, management and virtually all business areas. Let’s say that you’re an HR manager and need to develop a radical new procedure to handle new and complex human resource procedures in our company. You can get it completely wrong even if your...Full Article »

 “Marketing and selling are not necessarily complementary and may even be adversarial.” I had heard Drucker make some rather unusual statements during the two years that I had been his student, but this certainly had to be one of the most astonishing.  Yet he was right. My Son, the Musician Some years later, my old friend and wizard marketer, Joe Cossman, was telling me...Full Article »

In 1981, Jack Welch began his twenty year tenure as CEO of General Electric and his legend as one of the leading CEOs of the 20 th century. He was also the youngest CEO in GE’s history and the greatest of both sales and profit increases came under his leadership.  When he became CEO the company’s market value was about $12 billion. When he left, it was worth more than 25 times...Full Article »

Integrity can mean a lot of different things to different people, but Drucker simplified it to a single sentence --- it means adhering to a code of ethics and doing the right thing by sticking to that code. He was very clear the personal integrity was a part of business integrity, and doing the right thing in business and professional life was immensely powerful for the individual and the...Full Article »

Peter Drucker wrote that any business organization had just two basic functions: innovation and marketing.  Last month we talked about demand side innovation where the innovator has a definite objective or problem he is trying to solve. This month we’ll look at supply side innovation, where he stumbles on something unexpectedly. It’s what he does that makes the difference. If...Full Article »

Would you like to come up with innovations that mark you as an extraordinary performer? I’m talking about innovators like Frederick Smith who thought up the idea behind FedEx while still in college, or Albert Einstein who developed the Theory of Relativity not while laboring before a computer or over complicated formulae on a blackboard, but while lying comfortably with his eyes closed on...Full Article »

Strategy comes from the ancient Greek, and it means literally “the art of the general.” So when you are developing strategy, you are literally practicing the art of the general. Drucker wrote that the purpose of strategy is to enable an organization to achieve its desired results in an unpredictable environment. So contrary to what many believe, strategy is not about achieving...Full Article »

More than fifty years ago, Drucker reported on the allegory of the three stonecutters. According to Drucker, these three workers were approached and asked what they were doing. The first answered: “I’m earning a living by cutting stone.” The second one didn’t even look up when the question was asked. He continued to work, but immediately answered, “I’m doing...Full Article »

You can’t avoid failure completely. Sometimes you’re going to make mistakes—and if it’s not you, someone else will make them for you. However, these kinds of failures can be very valuable in that you will learn what (and what not) to do in order to avoid similar situations in the future. However, there is one type of failure that can have a major impact. In fact, it can...Full Article »

Drucker was fond of pointing out that the greatest advances in management came from taking ideas from a completely different field and applying them to the manager’s own. Ordinary managers simply took ideas developed in their own functional areas or industries and tried to make them better. This led to rather ordinary and very modest gains. Drucker said that the really big advances with...Full Article »