SOUTH BEND IMPLEMENTS DRUCKER PUBLIC-SECTOR LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

The City of South Bend and the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University have announced a partnership through which city employees will learn practical lessons on public-sector effectiveness drawn from the teachings of the late Peter Drucker.

The newly developed “Drucker Playbook for the Public Sector” will be implemented in a pilot program within the City of South Bend’s Department of Community Investment.

“We’re excited to participate in monthly workshops to cultivate individual leadership and management skills,” says Scott Ford, director of Community Investment. “The workshops offer team-wide lessons for maximizing our ability to meet our mission of serving the public.”

The Playbook will be refined based on the pilot implementation and then offered to other city departments, says Lawrence Greenspun, a senior program manager at the Drucker Institute and a South Bend resident who initiated the partnership with the city.

“I was looking for a way—both personally and professionally—to get involved in the community,” says Greenspun. “The city’s focus on effectiveness and measurable results are concepts central to Peter Drucker’s work.”

Drucker was a writer, professor and management consultant who was hailed by BusinessWeek as “the man who invented management.” In 2002, three years before he died, Drucker received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

“Drucker believed that to have a healthy society, organizations and institutions in all three sectors—public, private, and nonprofit—needed to be effective and responsible,” says Rick Wartzman, the Drucker Institute’s executive director. “We’re very excited about the opportunity in South Bend.”