The Uber Mentor

If you needed life-changing advice and could make only one phone call, who would be on the other end? For some, the answer is Peter Drucker.

1 | 2 | 3 NEXT

There are personal mentors -- the peer in your networking group, your old partner, your dad. And then there is Peter F. Drucker.

The 92-year-old author is far more than the grand master of management theory. For a fortunate, surprisingly large club, he has been the single most lucid, eloquent, and encouraging force in their lives. Consider Peter Drucker the North Star of mentors. The rest are only streetlights.

Drucker, however, would probably prefer to be likened to that functional floodlight than to anything remotely celestial. According to his friends, the erudite scholar is almost shockingly down-to-earth.

Drucker's generosity of spirit and his accessibility have surprised the raft of executives who have sought his counsel over the years. Bob Buford, a philanthropist and author living in Dallas, tells a story about how, at Drucker's 80th birthday party, a line of people went to the podium to talk about their relationship with him. "All of us had the same story," Buford says. "We all had wanted to talk to Peter because we knew he was the wisest man alive. And we were all scared to death to talk to him because he's this figure on Mount Rushmore. So all of us plotted, planned, and found an excuse to talk to him, and all of us found him incredibly accessible, incredibly gracious as a human being, and very focused and responsive to our issues."

What is it, exactly, that makes Peter Drucker such an effective mentor? He himself won't say. "I never talk about [the people I advise], let alone about my relationship with them," he told us. "You have to talk to them."

And so we did. Here are three of their stories. Contained in them are clues about how an expert mentor operates -- and how to get the most from a mentor when you find one.

John Bachmann

In the late 1970s, when John Bachmann was a general partner at securities firm Edward Jones, he and managing partner Edward D. "Ted" Jones Jr. became Drucker devotees. Over the course of a year they discussed each chapter of his magnum opus Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices and then began attending his speeches. In 1980, Bachmann visited David Jones, the head of Humana, the Louisville health-care company. Listening to Jones, Bachmann recognized the great man's influence. "I said to him, 'You've read Drucker,'" Bachmann recalls. "And Jones says, with a stage pause, 'We go see him.'"

Bachmann asked Jones the secret to getting to see Drucker and subsequently spent a month crafting a half-page letter to him. When Drucker received it, he called Bachmann and said, "I'm not taking new clients, but I'm intrigued with what you're doing." Bachmann spent four more weeks writing another letter. He wanted help in figuring out how to build the company to thrive in what he perceived would be a vastly more complicated future. After receiving Bachmann's second plea, Drucker said, "Come see me." That was the beginning of a two-decade-long relationship.

Bachmann credits Drucker with being the "set of instructions" that enabled him and Ted Jones to grow the company from a $19-million business with 750 employees to what it is today -- a $2.1-billion company with 25,000 employees. He also credits Drucker with helping them create a great place to work. "Peter understands as well as anyone that success in an organization needn't ever come at the sacrifice of humaneness," he says. "Peter has warned us that there are jobs that are man killers. He's warned us against creating positions that are destined for failure."

What's it like to talk to Drucker? He draws on a rich well of knowledge and peppers his conversation with analogy, says Bachmann. "He is in no way bound by the language and disciplines of business. When he talks about an issue, he very well could be talking about CÉsar Franck or Franz Liszt using musical examples, then he skips to Japanese art, and then Egyptian art, and draws that together with some example of the Catholic Church and the formation of education."

On a personal level, Bachmann says, Drucker helped him become more patient and to "have faith in people I might otherwise have been critical of. He has an extraordinary faith in people -- he's quick to see the strength. One of the great lessons of Peter is to build on people's strengths so that you make their weaknesses irrelevant."

Drucker became upset with the Edward Jones team once. "We had been involved in an underwriting that had stubbed its toe badly, and we were very down on ourselves, feeling sorry for ourselves," Bachmann says. "And he gave us the strongest scolding he'd ever given us. He said: 'What makes you think you're exempt from the normal bumps and bruises of life? Are you supposed to go through life without having anything go wrong? The question isn't, Do you make mistakes? It's, Do you learn from them?'"

1 | 2 | 3 NEXT

Try a RISK-FREE Issue of Inc. Today!

Renew | Contact Us | Current Issue

Select Services