Think about which activity gives you more rewards. In which are you most effective? If it's talking, you're a listener. If it's contemplating, you're a reader. If you determine you are a listener, you'll learn more by scheduling meetings, meals, phone conversations. If you're a reader, make sure you get all the important information in writing.
Rubin: You're your own boss; you have choice assignments; clients come to you, not vice versa. How can I get a life like that?
Drucker: If you believe in yourself, perform solo.
"Jobs are too risky," Drucker says. "I call them 'dangerous liaisons.' "
I know what he means. Jobs can destroy people's creativity with routine and limits.
"Since people have no job security anyway, they are increasingly going out on their own to do the work they want to do," he says. "In big companies, the leaving is more likely to be voluntary than involuntary."
There are books on how to be a manager and how to be an entrepreneur. But there is little advice on how to be a free agent. Drucker is one of the greatest resources.
If you are thinking of going solo, he advises, "first ask yourself, Can I take it emotionally? You will have to learn to be an outsider, to be on your own. The first three years will be rough. You'll have a terrific lunch with a potential client, and you'll never hear from him again. It's not the money that's the crucial resource; it's that ability to survive those first years of hopeful, promising leads that lead nowhere. If you have the emotional fortitude to last three years, you'll succeed. Also ask yourself, Why should the client be interested in me? What am I offering that the client wants?"
Drucker also advises that to go solo, you must think through what form your relationships with other people should take. "I recently worked with a metallurgist," he says. "I told him not to give advice at all. I counseled him to tell a potential client, 'Either you let me do the work or forget about hiring me.' If a client company has a problem, the metallurgist has to fix it. He moves into their plant until the problem is solved. Then he writes it up. He has six clients and a retainer from each, and he's having the time of his life. Before that, in his corporate job, he would spend a third of the day on metallurgy and the rest of it writing memos. He was bored out of his mind."
The money word today isn't plastics; it's retainer. An adviser draws up contracts to give clients semiexclusive access to his or her time. People want to be more like artists, responsible for a defined project done well if not masterfully. Today's truly ambitious people see themselves not as entrepreneurs but as "independent professionals," says Drucker.
"Since you can work masterfully with only a handful of clients, you must choose the best," he says. "The most I could handle, while I kept active as a writer and teacher, was two big clients. I listen with my inner ear to choose the right client. If I hear a client say, 'We have to let Roger Jones go. He's the best tax accountant, but he doesn't get along with human beings,' I know I don't have a client. But if the client says, 'Roger Jones is a pain in the neck, but there is no better tax accountant. It's my job to protect him from messy human beings,' then I know I have a client."
Rubin: Business is a disappearing art. Days come, days go. If you fix a problem, your reward is that it disappears. What are we doing that's good enough to last?
Drucker: The only thing that matters is how you touch people.
Your legacy--how you want to be remembered--is a potent measuring stick for anyone who cares about making a difference, not just making a living. How can you be remembered best for what counts? It's a question that nags at Drucker. "Never have we been so fixated on the soul, the cult of personality in business," he says. "Permissive business frightens me. The test of a leader is not what happens during his lifetime but what happens when he leaves.
"Every 50 years in the history of the West we've had extreme adulation of big wealth always followed by a period of extreme condemnation of great wealth," he observes. "The enormous period of worshipping great wealth of the 1880s was followed by the progressive decade and the antitrust laws; in the 1920s we had the same worship followed by the 1930s.
"There is only one difference today: the very rich no longer matter; they are totally irrelevant economically. They are merely celebrities. J. P. Morgan at his peak had a liquid fortune great enough to finance the entire economy--all capital needs--for four months. The capitalization of Bill Gates is probably more than J. P. Morgan ever had. But Gates's $40-billion fortune could finance the economy for less than a day. It's the mutual funds and the pension funds that matter. If Gates's wealth disappeared, we wouldn't notice.
"Nobody talks anymore about how essential capital is to capital formation, and nobody screams that the Gateses of the world are exploiters, either. They've become irrelevant. The moment they retire they're gone. The important thing is Microsoft, not Bill Gates."
I ask Drucker about his own legacy. What is he proudest of having achieved in his life? He seems momentarily surprised at the question. But then he answers quietly:
"None of my books or ideas mean anything to me in the long run. What are theories? Nothing. The only thing that matters is how you touch people. Have I given anyone insight? That's what I want to have done. Insight lasts; theories don't. And even insight decays into small details, which is how it should be. A few details that have meaning in one's life are important."
Harriet Rubin is the author of the best-seller The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women. She is at work on a new book about exceeding the limits of leadership.
