Inside Druker’s Brain

A few weeks ago, I read Jeffrey Krames’ book “Inside Drucker’s Brain”. It is a short and simple introduction to management guru Peter Drucker’s thoughts and philosophies on Management. It covers all his important ideas like Leadership & Execution, Strategy, Innovation, Management etc. This is not a comprehensive treatment on Drucker’s teachings, but a quick introduction. Most thoughts are definitely interesting but there were 2 chapters that got me thinking. Here are some ideas that i was very much interested by

Idea 1 : Abandon all but tomorrow

Krames quotes Drucker as follows

“The first step in a growth policy is not to decide where and how to grow. It is to decide what to abandon. In order to grow, a business must have a systematic policy to get rid of the outgrown, the obsolete and the unproductive”.

“increasingly organizations will have to plan abandonment rather than to try to prolong the life of a successful policy, practise or product”

Drucker’s litmus test of abandonment is  to ask the question “if we did not do this already, would we go into it now, knowing what we know? and if the answer is no, the organization has to ask: And what do we do now? it has to do something, no just another study”

Idea 2 : Ouside-in

Krames summarizes Drucker’s eight realities for every manager. Two of them are thought provoking for me. They are
  
Results and resources exist outside the business : Drucker stressed that there are no profits within an organization, only cost centers. Results never depend on anyone within the company but, instead, on customers in the marketplace.

Results are achieved by exploiting opportunities, not solving problems: solving problems can only return an organization to prior status quo.