Peter Drucker on the 6 Key Questions Every Organization Needs to Answer

Jason Hoffer our New Frontiers/TST Director passed this Peter Drucker quote to me from some reading he’s been doing – Management, Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. It perfectly applies to the discussion in my previous posts about the 6 Key Questions every organization needs to answer, and specifically the answers to the last four Key Questions – “why do we exist?”, “what makes us distinct?”, “what do we want to achieve in the long-term?” and “what do we want to become?” Drucker says…

“It is not easy for the management of a successful company to ask, what is our business? Everybody in the company then thinks that the answer is obvious as not to deserve discussion. It is never popular to argue with success, never popular to rock the boat. Sooner or later even the most successful answer to the question, ‘what is our business?’ becomes obsolete. Very few definitions of the purpose and mission of a business have anything like a life expectancy of thirty, let alone fifty years. To be good for ten years is probably all one can normally expect. In asking, what is our business? Management therefore also needs to add, and what will it be”

Notice Drucker’s language of both “doing” (i.e. Mission, BHAGG & Brand) as well as “being” (Vision). Drucker understood that the answer to the last four questions will change over time if an organization and its leaders stays attuned to the world around them.

And I wholeheartedly agree with Jason’s comment about the contemporary perspective of Drucker’s thoughts – “that was written in 1974 – I can imagine if he were to write that now those years would be dramatically fewer”