Management Challenges for the 21st Century
The continuous change means that assumptions that were valid yesterday can become invalid and, indeed, totally misleading in no time at all. (page 4)
In every organization - business or nonbusiness alike - only the last 10 percent of management has to be fitted to the organization's specific mission, its specific culture, its specific history and its specific vocabulary. (8)
Management is the specific and distinguishing organ of any and all organizations. (9)
People have to know and have to understand the organization structure they are supposed to work in. (13)
Someone in the organization must have the authority to make the final decision in a given area. (13)
The starting point both in theory and in practice may have to be "managing for performance". The starting point may be a definition of results. (21)
One does not "manage" people. The task is to lead people. And the goal is to make productive the specific strengths and knowledge of each individual. (22)
The starting point has to be the assumption - an assumption amply proven by all our exerience - that the customer never buys what the supplier sells. (29)
What is value to the customer is always something quite different from what is value or quality to the supplier. (29)
An entrepreneur who does not learn how to manage will not last long. (38)
A management that does not learn to innovate will not last long. (38)
Business - and every other organization today - has to be designed for change as the norm and to create change rather than react to it. (38)
Management must focus on the results and performance of the organization. (39)
The first task of management is to define what results and performance are in a given organization. (39)
It is therefore the specific function of management to organize the resources of the organization for results outside the organization. (39)
The center of a modern society, economy and community is not technology. It is not information. It is not productivity. It is the managed institution as the organ of society to produce results. And management is the specific tool, the specific function, the specific instrument to make institutions capable of producing results. (39)
All institutions will have to think through what performance means. And strategy increasingly will have to be based on new definitions of performance. (61)
One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it. (73)
In a period of upheavals, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm. (73)
In a period of rapid structural change, the only ones who survive are the Change Leaders. (73)
A change leader sees change as opportunity. A change leader looks for change, knows how to find the right changes and knows how to make them effective both outside the organization and inside it. (73)
This requires : 1) Policies to make the future. 2) Systematic methods to look for and to anticipate change. 3) The right way to introduce change, both within and outside the organization. 4) Policies to balance change and continuity. (73)
The first policy - and the foundation for all the others - is to abandon yesterday. And if people are committed to maintaining yesterday, they are simply not available to create tomorrow. (74)
The change leader puts every product, every service, every process, every market, every distribution channel, every customer and end-use, on trial for its life. (74)
The question is never : "What have they cost ?" The question is : "What will they produce ?" (75)
In a period of rapid change the "How?" is likely to become obsolete faster than the "What?" The change leader must therefore also ask of every product, service, market or process : "If we were to go into this now, knowing what we now know, would we go into it the way we are doing it now?" And this question needs to be asked of the successful product, service, market and process as regularly - and as seriouly - as of the unsuccessful product, service, market or process. (77)
To be a successful change leader an enterprise has to have a policy of systematic innovation. (84)
Innovation is not "flash of genius." It is hard work. And this work should be organized as a regular part of every unit within the enterprise, and of every level of management. (85)
Above all, there is need for continuity in respect to the fundamentals of the enterprise : its mission, its values, its definition of performance and results. (92)
One thing is certain for developed countries - and probably for the entire world : We face long years of profound changes. The changes are not primarily economic changes. They are not even primarily technological changes. They are changes in demographics, in politics, in society, in philosophy and, above all, in worldview. (92)
To try to make the future is highly risky. It is less risky, however, than not to try to make it. (93)
The scarcest resources in any organization are performing people. (121)
Major changes always start outside an organization. (122)
It is always with noncustomers that basic changes begin and become significant. (122)
For he knowledge worker in general, and especially for executives, information is their key resource. (123)
Only by being a customer oneself, a salesman oneself, a patient oneself, can one get true information about the outside. (131)
In the long run, information about the outside may be the most important information executives need to do their work. (132)