Another reason I get so passionate about management

Today in The Daily Drucker:

Management and Economic Development

Management creates economic and social development. Economic and social development is the result of management.

It can be said, without too much oversimplification, that there are no “underdeveloped countries.” There are only “undermanaged” ones.

Japan a hundred and forty years ago was an underdeveloped country by every material measurement. But it very quickly produced management of great competence, indeed, of excellence.

This means that management is the prime mover and that development is a consequence. All our experience in economic development proves this. Wherever we have only capital, we have not achieved development. In the few cases where we have been able to generate management energies, we have generated rapid development.

Development, in other words, is a matter of human energies rather than of economic wealth. And the generation and direction of human energies is the task of management.
—Peter Drucker, The Ecological Vision

Boy oh boy. The Action Point in The Daily Drucker continues with these questions:

“What impact does your company have in the developing world? Are your activities there raising the managerial standards of local companies?”

My question is a bit more intimate:

How many CEO’s do you know who need to understand this and start acting like COO’s in their own companies, managing what (and who) they claim to be developing?