What Would Peter Drucker Ask?
We hosted our 3rd Roundtable discussion on 12.22.20 featuring Vijay Sathe, Ph.D., a legend in family business consulting.
Have you ever met anyone who worked with Peter Drucker?
Vijay is the C.S. & D.J. Davidson Chair & Professor of Management at Claremont Graduate University. He was a professor at the Harvard Business School before joining the Drucker School faculty. Vijay has taught in numerous education programs worldwide. He has received the "Professor of the Year" award from the Drucker MBA graduating class seven times to recognize his outstanding teaching. He has published six books and numerous articles in academic and professional journals.
Amid many stories from family business owners and advisors in this Roundtable, Vijay suggested that we all need to ask the five questions from Peter Drucker's work. You can find these questions in the book Peter Drucker's Five Most Important Questions: Enduring Wisdom for Today's Leaders.
His first question is, What is Your Mission? You must know your reason or purpose for existing. And as a leader of any company, organization, or project, it is your responsibility that all members of your team know and understand that mission. All responsibilities and tasks should be relatable directly back to that important mission. People within the organization should find value in where they fit into the fulfillment of the mission.
Second, Vijay talks about knowing your customers. Peter Drucker asks Who are Your Customers? To best answer this question, think about who most values the products and/or services your company has to offer? Drucker describes two types of customers, primary customers and supporting customers. Primary customers depend on your company far more than supporting customers that can do with or without your products or services.
The next question you have to ask yourself and your business partners is What is it that Your Customer Values? This is something that may vary between your primary and supporting customers. The most important concept is that, as a business owner, you are always asking for feedback and implementing reasonable change based on that customer feedback as with any other standard operating procedure.
The fourth idea that Vijay points out as Drucker's important questions relates to the results you are achieving as a company. What are Your Results? What changes can be measured as a result of the products and/or services that your company provides? How are those results measured and evaluated? Profit should not always be the sole determinant of success. This is where the company mission will come back into play. Are you fulfilling your mission?
And last but not least, Drucker feels every organization leader should be asking themselves, What is Your Plan? How do you intend to carry out the tasks needed day in day out to fulfill the mission you have put forth to yourself, other business partners, and your potential customers?
Vijay was not only giving us advice from the late Peter Drucker, but he was asking what the plan was for the Family Business Collaboration. He wanted to know how we intend to fulfill our mission of providing a digital platform designed to model collaboration and expertise for family business owners, leaders, managers, and advisors. With Vijay and other Founding Members, we are answering these five questions to accomplish what we have set out to do.
We look forward to more Roundtable Conversations and learning more about how to help more Family Businesses.
Family Business Collaboration members can read the transcript or review the video in the FBC Content Area: https://www.familybusinesscollaboration.com/login.
For details on our plan, please join the Family Business Collaboration here: https://www.familybusinesscollaboration.com/introduction
Reference:
Peter Drucker' s Five Most Important Questions: Enduring Wisdom for Today' s Leaders. (2016). Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 37(2), 305–306. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-12-2015-0281
