The Daily Drucker: January 6 – Practice of Abandonment

If we did not do this already, would we get into it now?

The question has to be asked – and ask seriously – “If we did not do this already, would we, knowing what we know, go into it now?”  If the answer is no, the reaction must be “What do we do now?”

In three cases the right action is always outright abandonment.  Abandonment is the right action if a product, service, market, or process “still has a few years of life.”  It is these dying products, services, or processes that always demand the greatest care and the greatest efforts.  They tie down the most productive and the ablest people. But equally, a product, service, market or process should be abandoned if the only argument for keep it is “It is fully written off.”  For management purposes there are no “cost-less assets.”  There are only “sunk costs.”  The third case where abandonment is the right policy – and the most important one – is the one where, for the sake of maintaining the old or declining product, service, market, or process the new and growing product, service, or market is being stunted or neglected.

ACTION POINT: Ask the question posed above and if the answer is no, make the tough choice to abandon a cherished business.

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, Page 8

The Daily Drucker: January 5 - Abandonment

There is nothing as difficult and as expensive, but nothing as futile, as trying to keep a corpse from stinking

Effective executives know that they have to get many things dome effectively.  Therefore, they concentrate.  And the first rule for the concentration of the executive efforts is to slough off the past that has ceased to be productive.  The first-class resources, especially those scares resources of the human strength, are immediately pulled out and put to work on the opportunities of tomorrow.  If leaders are unable to slough off yesterday, to abandon yesterday, they simply will not be able to create tomorrow.

Without systematic and purposeful abandonment, an organisation will be overtaken by events.  It will squander its best resources on things it should have never been doing or should no longer do.  As a result, it will lack the resources, especially capable people, needed to exploit the opportunities that arise.  Far too few businesses are willing to slough off yesterday, and as a result, far too few have resources available for tomorrow.

ACTION POINT: Stop squandering resources on obsolete businesses and free up your capable people to take advantage of new opportunities.

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, Page 7

The Daily Drucker: January 4 - Organizational Inertia

All organizations need a discipline that makes them face up to reality.

All organizations need to know that virtually no program or activity will perform effectively for a long time without modification and redesign.  Eventually every activity becomes obsolete. Among organizations that ignore this fact, the worst offender is government.  Indeed, the inability to stop doing anything is the central disease of government and a major reason why government today is sick.  Hospitals and universities are only a little better than government in getting rid of yesterday.

Businessmen are just as sentimental about yesterday as bureaucrats.  They are just as likely to respond to the failure of a product or program by doubling the efforts invested in it.  But they are, fortunately, unable to indulge freely in their predilections.  They stand under an objective discipline of the market.  They have an objective outside measurement, profitability.  And so they are forced to slough off the unsuccessful and unproductive sooner than later.  In other organizations - government, hospitals, the military and so on - economics is only a restraint.

All organizations must be capable of change.  We need concepts and measurements that give to the other kinds of organizations what the market test and profitability yardstick give to business.  Those tests and yardsticks will be quite different.

ACTION POINT: Make sure your nonprofit organization has rigorous tests and yardsticks to measure performance.

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, Page 6

The Daily Drucker: January 3 - Management is Indispensable

"Whoever makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew before deserves better of mankind than any speculative philosopher or metaphysical system builder."

Management will remain a basic and dominant institution perhaps as long as Western civilization itself survives.  For management is not only grounded in the nature of the modern industrial system and in the needs of modern business enterprise, to which an industrial system must entrust its productive resources, both human and material.  Management also expresses the basic beliefs of modern Western society.  It expresses the belief in the possibility of controlling man's livelihood through the systematic organization of economic resources.  It expresses the belief that economic change can be made in the most powerful engine for the human betterment and social justice - that, as Jonathan Swift first overstated it three hundred years ago, whoever makes tow blades of grass grow where only one grew before deserves better of man kind than any speculative philosopher or metaphysical system builder.
     Management - which is the organic of society specifically charged with making resources productive, that is, with the responsibility for organized economic advance - therefore reflects the basic spirit of the modern age.  It is, in fact, indispensable, and this explains why, once begotten it grew so fast and with so little opposition.

ACTION POINT: Come up with a few examples of why management, its competence, its integrity, and its performance, is so decisive to the free world.

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, January 3 , Page 5

The Daily Drucker: January 2 - Identifying the Future

January 2 - Identifying the Future

The important thing is to identify the "future that has already happened."

Futurists always measure their batting average by counting how many things they have predicted that have come true.  They never count how many important things come true that they did not predict.  everything a forecaster predicts may come to pass.  Yet, he may not have seen the most meaningful of the emergent realities or, worse still, may not have paid attention to them.  There is no way to avoid the irrelevancy in forecasting, for the important and distinctive are always the result of change in values, perception and goals, that is, in things that one can divine but not forecast.
     But the most important work of the executive is to identify the changes that have already happened. The important challenge in society, economics, politics is to exploit the changes that have already occurred and to use them as opportunities.  The important thing is to identify the "future that has already happened" - and to develop a methodology for perceiving and analyzing these changes.  A good deal of this methodology is incorporated in my 1985 book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which shows how one systematically looks to the changes in society, in demographics, in meaning, in science and technology, as opportunities to make the future.

ACTION POINT: Identify the major trends in your market that have already appeared.  Write a page on their likely longevity and the impact on your life and organization.

Quoted from The Daily Drucker, January 2 , Page 4

The Daily Drucker: January 1 - "Integrity in Leadership"

 January 1 - Integrity in Leadership

"The spirit of an organization is created from the top"

The proof of the sincerity and seriousness of a management is uncompromising emphasis on integrity of character.  This, above all, has to be symbolized in the management's "people" decisions.  For it is the character through which leadership is exercised; it is the character that sets the example and is imitated. Character is not something one can fool people about.  The people with whom a person works, and especially subordinates, know in a few weeks whether he or she has integrity or not.  They may forgive a person for a great deal: incompetence, ignorance, insecurity. or bad manners.  But they will not forgive a lack of integrity in that person.  Nor will they forgive higher management for choosing him.

This is particularly true of the people at the head of an enterprise.  For the spirit of the organization is created from the top.  If an organization is great of spirit, it is because the spirit of its top people are great.  If it decays, it does so because the top rots; as the proverb has it. "Trees die from the top."
No one should ever be appointed to a senior position unless top management is willing to have his or her character serve as the model for subordinates.

ACTION POINT: Evaluate the character of the CEO and top management when considering a job offer.  Align yourself with people who have integrity.

- Quoted from The Daily Drucker, January , Page 3

Welkam 2014: "The Daily Drucker"

Welkam 2014. 

We have talked about it for long enough and now finally it is here.  Past years have been great practice to get all those ambitions and resolutions in place and we all know our own ratio of success in self management, indeed no need to point fingers...love thyself.

For the past 15 years, I have enjoyed a creative business indulgence in seeking to manifest "some positive & sustainable structural change for farmers in the agribusiness sector", that would lead to a "measurable improvement in the livelihood of farmers and growers" in their respective economy.

In this, it was indeed a pleasure in 2013, to work with all my colleagues launching the world first "agri-superannuation accounts for smallholder growers and farmers" in Vanuatu.  Although still in the pilot phase for 100 coconut farmers it represents an exciting potential for change benefiting growers, private sector and government in Vanuatu and I am very grateful to be part of this initiative.

I have also learnt that good structure can serve a creative mind well, especially in management. In 2012, The Daily Drucker served just this purpose.  Every morning my business mentor and myself discussed "366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done" and we continue to refer back to these insights regularly as we build our "farm-gate services portfolio for growers" in Vanuatu.

So in 2014 I am setting a combined goal, to get closer to making this blog a "Daily" and to share with you the remarkable insights of Peter F Drucker.  Not much is available on the net on his daily insights and so I hope it will serve others as well.  My minimum practice will be to write out the page for the day, a study technique that serve me well in the past. 

I am already a step behind, but the Insight for January 1 is the best and most crucial part for me to start: "Integrity in Leadership" - The spirit of an organization is created from the top"

If you are into management theory and practice...enjoy...if you are into Drucker...my pleasure..."as every human interaction is a management outcome"...  Looking forward to see x/366 for 2014

Bon chance...

Kindest

abl