Happy Wednesday Everyone,
Today’s newsletter is a cross-post with my first article published on LinkedIn, an explorational answer to the question Erick Jorgenson asked of me in his own article “AI And the End of Consumerism: Could Automation Force True Sustainability?” There is no need to read both versions as they are one and the same, but if you want to connect and support the article on LinkedIn, it is appreciated.
I hope you enjoy, and as always, let me know your thoughts directly, or in the comments.
Huge thank you to Erick Jorgenson for writing this article, "AI And the End of Consumerism: Could Automation Force True Sustainability?", and giving me the opportunity to explore what might be required in the future of leadership, particularly surrounding the arena of sustainability.
I’d highly encourage you to read Erick’s article. This response was intended to be a post, but it substantially exceeded the character limit, and I felt he deserved a full response. What follows are my expanded thoughts and responses to a question he posed:
“Are we really just circling back to those Drucker-era fundamentals? Which principles do you think are most relevant to carry forward now?”
Drucker’s principles never actually went away.
After rereading Erick’s piece, I couldn’t help but think: I’m not sure “𝗰𝗶𝗿𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸” is the right framing.
We need to revisit how we interpret and apply his principles, particularly in light of how certain ones, such as understanding and managing full cost and reward excellence, were utilized during the consumerism era.
We bent them toward the logic of infinite growth, short-term profit, and planned obsolescence. In that process, we often lost sight of their original spirit.
We should revisit these principles in light of modern realities, including AI, sustainability, burnout, and the search for meaning, and ask ourselves:
How do we apply them differently this time?
How can we as leaders not 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙨𝙚𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙩𝙬𝙚𝙚𝙣 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 (systems thinking), 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙥𝙨 in an authentic manner that lends to a thriving ecosystem of meaning, value, and purpose for consumer, employee, and employer?
𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.
Drucker insisted that decision-making should be pushed closer to where knowledge lives. That idea was fairly radical for its time, yet in practice it rarely held at scale; this becomes more evident as we incorporate globalization and constant communication through the internet into our framing.
Consumerism-era organizations often replicated silos and command-and-control hierarchies, and continue to try and do so in remote environments.
Decentralization without connection has just become fragmentation, leading to a loss of meaning for many. But if we reinterpret decentralization through the lens of the worker and consumer’s needs and realities, it could mean reclaiming something richer: a sense of community and belonging through (healthy) interdependence of interconnected organizational and societal micro-ecosystems.
It's quite possible to do so through the same communicative-collaborative technologies we use, just implementing Drucker's principles differently by choosing 𝗵𝗼𝘄 and 𝘄𝗵𝘆 we apply them in the first place.
Technology has the opportunity to provide a more pure form of Drucker’s decentralization by ensuring that authority is exercised within strong communities of meaning and support. 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻, 𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿.
𝗖𝗼𝘀𝘁𝘀:
Drucker emphasized knowing the “full cost” of a supply chain, and in the consumerism era we interpreted that largely as efficiency and margin control. But what about the costs we chose not to measure, or we find difficult to measure?
Costs that are becoming more apparent in the post-pandemic world, such as the social and mental toll on employees, the ethical compromises made in pursuit of scale, and the environmental damage externalized to future generations.
If we are serious about sustainability, both ecological and human, then “full costs” must mean all of it: the mental, social, ethical, environmental, and economic. Seen in this way, full-cost accounting becomes not a bookkeeping exercise but a moral and systemic one.
𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴:
Both of these are examples of where the depths of Drucker’s principles were flattened by consumerism. He wrote about the importance of people in organizations, but too often “people-centeredness” was interpreted as a matter of productivity and retention, what value and labor can be extracted from them on what timeline.
Yet the past decade has made it clear: burnout, disengagement, and deteriorating mental health stem largely from the erosion of community and the absence of meaning at work. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲, 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲.
People don’t burn out because they are too busy; they burn out because they feel disconnected and unanchored.
If we reinterpret Drucker here, we might say that: to lead is to weave meaning into community authentically, whereas management is to maintain the methods of weaving and keep the subsequent tapestry from deteriorating.
Not all managers are leaders, and that’s fine, but leaders should also be able to manage.
During the consumerism era, individual excellence became less of a self-discovered drive of meaning and more of a standardized, measured, reductive measure of conformity.
Performance systems took on the role of control versus purpose-informed inspiration.
But through a sustainability perspective, we could say that Drucker’s original impulse was to call people toward a collective, shared higher purpose while empowering their own individual purpose of their choosing instead of boxing them into narrow metrics.
Excellence in a post-consumerist age must mean encouraging creativity, resilience, and regenerative impact. Is excellence marked by how much value we extract from people or resources, or by how much value we co-create and restore?
In this sense, the conceptualization of “return on all assets employed” that Drucker spoke of should be extended to returns not only in concrete measurable, or financial terms, but to regenerative, conceptual terms that encompass people, communities, and ecosystems (environmental and organizational).
𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗯𝘆 𝗢𝗯𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲:
This, for me, is perhaps the clearest example of this tension and ties all of the other principles I’ve discussed together. It was meant to align individual purpose with organizational purpose. But under consumerism, individuals were required to subsume their personal meaning to organizational goals.
𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗲-𝘄𝗮𝘆, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗺𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗰𝗼-𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀. And so, the spirit of the principle was lost even as the structure of it was adopted.
Reinterpreting MBO today might require leaders to facilitate genuine co-creation of purpose: employees aligning with organizations that align with them, organizations aligning with both internal micro-cultures and external communities that sustain them, all of it 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗼𝗴𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝘆 𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗰 𝗼𝗳 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆-𝘁𝗼𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀-𝘀𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆.
I’m very fond of Ranjay Gulati’s HBR article “Soul of a Start-Up,” and I think the intangible essence felt at a company by leaders and individual contributors it discusses, whether framed as culture or soul, is the presence of authentic alignment anchored by an organization’s purpose and mission.
So when I reflect on Erick’s piece, I don’t see us circling back to Drucker. I see us reframing Drucker through a new lens, a reclaimed perspective that insists on seeing the full relationships at play: between people and themselves, between employees and organizations, between organizations and economies, between economies and the planet.
Consumerism narrowed those relationships into a series of connected transactions. Post-consumerism invites leaders to reopen relationships and relational understanding; to do so, we may need to explore cross-disciplinary arenas of thought that we might not have considered in conversation with Drucker.
Further Questions and Closing:
If Drucker’s management and leadership fundamentals were distorted by consumerism into control mechanisms rather than guides for authentic alignment, 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼 𝘄𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘄?
How can leaders interpret Drucker's principles towards providing meaning, community, sustainability, and regeneration?
The foundational question that presupposes answering all of the above is whether we will have the courage and imagination to move through uncertainty and discomfort to interpret them differently this time, or will we continue to take the easy path of creating the next iteration of efficiency tools dressed in modern language?
Whether you agree or disagree with this take on Drucker, I'd love to hear your thoughts whether in the comments or a more direct conversation.
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I'm Chris, founder of Cultivar Leadership Solutions, where my work focuses on guiding leaders and professionals seeking a more authentic path forward in influencing their organizational ecosystems through understanding and cultivating the relationships between people, processes, and systems.
I provide guidance for leaders who are embracing their authentic selves, their values, and learning how to shape the environment around them with that same authenticity.
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Sounds a lot like Distributism! Dorothy Day and GK Chesterton would like a word!
As you mentioned, the mistake was not in Drucker’s ideas, but in their application. It will always be up to us to decide if people or gains will be more important. I am afraid that people will be people and completely unaware will continue damaging themselves.