Managing for Results

Drucker's 1964 book — one of the first serious treatments of business strategy as a discipline — is the source of many ideas that contemporary management takes for granted: the focus on results over activity, the categorisation of products by revenue and cost dynamics, the argument that the purpose of a business is to create a customer. The book is clear and surprisingly modern, which is typical of Drucker; he wrote with unusual clarity for his discipline. For product direction it is foundational reading on what management actually is, and a useful counterweight to the more specialised contemporary frameworks. Drucker is worth reading widely; this is a good starting point.