Applying Peter Drucker's Principles to the Future of Your Organization

Bruce Rosenstein

www.brucerosenstein.com

February 20, 2014

Peter Drucker (1909-2005) Consultant to major corporations (General Electric, Procter & Gamble, etc.) and nonprofits (Girl Scouts of the USA, American Red Cross and others) Author of more than 40 books selling millions of copies worldwide Professor (The Drucker-Ito School, Claremont, Cal. & elsewhere)

Drucker’s Business Fundamentals The purpose of a business is to create a customer 2 essential functions: marketing and innovation

What is your role within these functions? What can it be in the future?

Drucker’s First Rule of Priority Setting: Focus on the Future, Not the Past

“In human affairs – political, social, economic and business– it is pointless to try to predict the future, let alone attempt to look ahead 75 years…But it is possible – and fruitful -- to identify major events that have already happened, irrevocably, and that therefore will have predictable effects in the next decade or two. It is possible, in other words, to identify and prepare for the future that has already happened.” -Peter F. Drucker, Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management, 1998

“Looking for the future that has already

happened and anticipating its impacts

introduces new perception in the

beholder.” – Peter F. Drucker, Managing for

Results, 1964

Drucker further believed that we must “develop a methodology for perceiving and analyzing these changes.” This can be a central challenge and goal for information professionals in this era of disruption and upheaval.

How to Determine “the Future That Has Already Happened” Part 1 Human intelligence: Meeting in future-oriented groups (including book groups) Brown-bag workplace events with speakers Journal clubs

How to Determine “the Future That Has Already Happened” Part 2 Information Searches: Applying Competitive Intelligence techniques Free and fee databases, Web searching Monitoring of newspapers, magazines and journals Government reports/statistics Demographics: “Demography is Destiny”- Auguste Comte, 19th century philosopher

“Balancing change and continuity requires continuous work on information.” Peter F. Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, 1999

“There is a time lag between a major social, economic, or cultural event and its full impact.” – Peter F. Drucker, Managing for Results, 1964

Organizations and Think Tanks, Part 1

Accenture (Public Service for the Future) Burson-Marsteller (Future Perspective) DARPA Deloitte (Center for the Edge) Foresight (future-oriented organization from the British government)

Organizations and Think Tanks, Part 2

The Future of Work (an initiative from Lynda Gratton, a professor at the London Business School) Institute for the Future (IFTF) Pew Research Center RAND World Future Society (WFS) Slogan: “Tomorrow is Built Today”

Finding the Future on Higher Education Websites News sections: (recent events, conferences, student competitions, etc.) University publications, including alumni magazines Student and faculty blogs Faculty awards, research, bios, publications, expert guides Information about programs/classes

The Power of the Outside The key changes affecting your organization happen in the outside world. Besides online work, get out of the office/library and learn about your customers, noncustomers and people who think and act differently from you and your colleagues.

Learn to Take Information Responsibility What Information Do You Need to Do Your Job? Who Do You Owe Information To? Who Owes Information To You? In What Format? In What Time Frame?

Shaping the Future of Your Organization

“…the seemingly most successful business of today is a sham and a failure if it does not create its own and different tomorrow. It must innovate and re-create its products or services but equally the enterprise itself.” - Peter F. Drucker, The Executive in Action, 1996

Competitive Intelligence for the Future

Arik Johnson, Aurora WDC, from Bruce Rosenstein, Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way, 2013: “Strategic, market, and competitive intelligence overcomes traditionally internally -focused leadership by placing strategy as the product, rather than the process, for defining and achieving success. The bygone era when strategy and marketing were separate disciplines has enabled an intense focus on generating new demand and quantifying customer value by solving customer problems, often before customers even knew they had them.”

Craig Fleisher, Aurora WDC, from Bruce Rosenstein, Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way, 2013: "Competitive intelligence is, by design and tasking, a process that helps executives in organizations to envision a more desirable future. Unlike many better known organizational functions that rely on reorganizing and tabulating prior performance data, CI activities and practices are designed to help decision makers look ahead, and many also help managers to “‘peer around corners.”’

Chris Hote, Digimind USA, from Bruce Rosenstein, Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way, 2013:

[of the growing role of CI in organizations]”… fueled by the substantial and constantly increasing amount of information available on the Internet. Beyond newspapers, press releases, corporate announcements, and corporate websites, the Internet now contains numerous databases (patents, clinical trials), public information (regulatory bodies), and user-generated content (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and so on) that can be exploited to better anticipate market trends, competitor tactics, and consumer demands.”

Chris Hote calls competitive intelligence a “discipline” that should ideally report to executive management, and it should include: Field intelligence Monitoring/analysis of competitors (for instance mergers & acquisitions, hiring, product launches, technology, etc.) Monitoring/analysis of consumers/customers

Competitive intelligence fits well with such

Drucker disciplines as:

Management by objectives: Organizational

strategy for the present and future, converted into

targets/assignments in a variety of functional

areas

The theory of the business: Collective

assumptions made about your customers,

competitors, technology and the markets in which

you operate. What do you get paid for? Is your

theory of the business still valid?

Think about multiple aspects of the

information in today’s webinar: how it affects

you, your library/information center (if you are

in one), your organization and even your

profession.

Where is your organizations going in the

future, and where could it go?

What is your role, and what is your

responsibility?

To learn more about my new McGraw-Hill book, Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way: Developing and Applying a Forward-Focused Mindset: http://brucerosenstein.com/create-your-future/

Thank you for participating in this webinar! To learn more, please visit www.brucerosenstein.com To learn more about Peter Drucker: The Drucker Institute www.druckerinstitute.com The Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, at Claremont Graduate University http://www.cgu.edu/pages/130.asp contact me: bruce@brucerosenstein.com