Transforming the Ordinary into the Extraordinary

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When Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University) named its management school after Peter Drucker in a ceremony on October 21, 1987, the longtime professor at the school made a deceptively simple yet hopeful statement: “This is the first thing I have learned, during these fifty years of working with, and studying, institutions and the people who manage them: Workmanship counts… Few tasks in any discipline require genius. But all require conscientiousness.”

The need for conscientiousness can apply to everyone in an organization, from the lowest to the highest levels. As Drucker writes in Management: Revised Edition, “What is required is not genius; it is hard work. It is not being clever; it is being conscientious. It is what CEOs are paid for.” Similarly, he believed that leadership is not based on charisma and flash but on hard work, diligence, and responsibility.

The possibility and potential of the ordinary person

The observations are a celebration of the possibility and potential of the ordinary person. Drucker noted that superstars are in short supply, and even if you work with a superstar, there is no guarantee they will remain with your organization forever.

In Classic Drucker: Wisdom from Peter Drucker from the Pages of Harvard Business Review, Drucker wrote that a key responsibility of management and leadership within organizations is “to make ordinary people do extraordinary things.” That can mean that success and fulfillment are available to people who focus on hard work (however that is self-defined) and a day-to-day striving for excellence.

In an ideal world, everyone would develop and maintain inner standards of excellence that are high yet attainable, the highest quality of which we are capable. We don’t necessarily need advanced degrees or years of work experience to put high standards into practice. They can be especially valuable when starting a new position or taking on significant new responsibilities.

Many would consider Drucker to have been a genius, but he was also self-driven, hardworking, deliberate, diligent, detail-oriented, enthusiastic, and determined, attributes that anyone can emulate.

There are a number of what might be called ordinary, commonplace, or unsung virtues that interconnect and, in combination, can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. These are deceptively unglamorous, doable without necessarily being easy. Drucker displayed all these virtues throughout his career of more than 70 years.

Applying commonplace, unsung virtues

Accountability. In Managing the Non-Profit Organization, Drucker writes: “By focusing on accountability, people take a bigger view of themselves.” If your colleagues are counting on you to deliver, it can contribute to feeling that you are engaged in an enterprise benefiting many people, to a cause larger than yourself.

Conscientiousness, diligence, and development of craft. Adopting a positive, roll-up-your-sleeves attitude; Drucker wrote often of continuous improvement, or what the Japanese have termed kaizen. He believed that if you carefully practice daily improvement of a task, ability, product, or service, you are more likely to achieve innovation.

Credibility and reliability. People will want your services or to work with you if you can deliver on your promises, can be relied upon, and consistently keep your word. Santa Clara University leadership professors James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, in their classic book, The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations, assert that “credibility is the foundation of leadership.” In part this means following their simple suggestion to “do what you say you’re going to do.”

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Resilience, perseverance, and tenacity. These qualities in recent years are often grouped as grit, following the research of University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Angela Duckworth summarized in her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.

Workmanship. In the 1987 speech, and later in the book Drucker on Asia, Drucker referenced workmanship in the context of the story of Phidias, “the greatest sculptor of ancient Greece,” whose creations “still stand on the roof of the Parthenon in Athens.”

A formative experience of self-development

As Drucker remembered the story, Phidias presented his bill to the Athenian accounting office, which protested having to pay for work on the back of the statues, which could not be seen by people on the ground. Phidias countered that although people could not see the backs of the statues, the Gods could. In Drucker on Asia, he describes the lesson, which he first read in the Hamburg City Library as a teenage trainee in a cotton-export firm, as a formative experience of self-development.

Performing Multiple Roles at Work

Like many of us, Drucker performed multiple roles: writing articles and books while teaching, consulting, and being a public speaker. These domains of activity called on different aspects of the virtues and involved a changing cast of interaction partners, including new students each semester and new consulting clients.

Practicing ordinary, unsung virtues not in isolation but in combination can be the fulfilling work of a lifetime. They are transferable across professions, at any stage of a career, and can help you differentiate yourself as a valued colleague and professional in the era of artificial intelligence.