Found! The Lost Drucker Tapes

In the late 1960s, a company called BNA Communications Inc. began offering a selection of 16-millimeter films featuring the already-legendary Peter Drucker teaching essential organizational and leadership principles through “authentic situations.”

BNA produced four different series over the years, as film gave way to videotape: “The Effective Executive,” “The Manager and the Organization,” “Managing Discontinuity” and “Managing for Tomorrow.”

Each release was a big deal. Thousands of people, for instance, turned out for screenings of “Managing for Tomorrow” in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Drucker was a star.

Over time, however, the BNA tapes got lost. Ownership of the material changed hands. Marketing all but ceased. Sales dwindled.

That’s too bad. For Drucker’s wisdom is indispensible, as you can discover as you watch these rediscovered management classics, now supplemented with additional material and powered by 21st-century interactive technology.

The first of these “Lost Drucker Tapes,” featuring timeless lessons about effective time management, can easily be downloaded for the iPad from the iTunes store for $4.99.

It’s a tiny investment that can pay big dividends. “I have not come across a single ‘natural’: an executive who was born effective,” Drucker wrote. “All the effective ones have had to learn to be effective.”