Author: Pete Drucker
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Reviewer: Drew Nicholson, CEO at OgilvyOne Business
To review the work of a man who is dubbed the ‘father of modern management’ and whose many concepts have shaped modern business thinking, is daunting. I grew up with his quotes on management and although his work dates back to the 1970s, many of those principles still hold true.
The 5 most important questions you will ever ask about your organisation is a look back at his self-assessment process:
- What is our mission? (And can you fit it on a T-shirt?) It’s the most important clarion for achieving organisational success. In this book, Pete Drucker focuses on the role of ‘the big 5’, in terms of how they affect non-profit organisations; from charities to hospitals.
- Who is our customer? Customers should always be at the centre, but the age-old questions get a fresh spin for millennials. The book helps with modern illustrations from the likes of Raghu Krishnamoorthy, who demonstrates how businesses like Uber and Airbnb are not just influencing business, but are having an effect on the concept of business.
- What does the customer value? In Drucker’s view this is a question so complicated that it can only be answered by customers themselves.
- What are our results? Today, we have so many tools at our disposal that we are asked to interrogate our results; short and long term, goal and quant.
- What is our plan? We are prompted to look at a number of different plans that millennials can make some sense of.
In closing, we also look at transformational leadership. We are living in disruptive and transformative times and there are few sectors where these issues would not be valid.
The book is short; it sets up the big principles, it translates them for the modern era and then helps with some suggested questions and notes to follow.
I rarely read long tomes of hundreds of pages but this book is great; it’s short and sharp and is good practical brain food.
Star Rating: 4/5