How to Change a Start-up into a Corp-up?

/ Entrepreneurial Leadership / By

Whitehead once said that whole European philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. Having studied hundreds of books on contemporary management one may came to a conclusion that they consist of footnotes to Peter Drucker, and his intellectual output encapsulated in “Management” from 1970’s.

Drucker is not only father of remark that business has two, and only two basic functions: marketing and innovation, but also other essential principles on managing teams and delivering work in productive way, which is the first test of management’s competence.

It was Drucker who is said to invent society of organizations depending on managers, who in the first place set objectives, secondly organize, next motivate and communicate. Managers, says Drucker analyse, appraise and interpret performance. Finally they develop people, including themselves.

Drucker gives a lot of clues on how to make wise decision. Becoming part of top management you’ll constantly need to ask yourself the question “What is our business, and what is not?”.

Drucker says, that the right answer are the results of asking the right questions, and decisions are rarely choices between right and wrong. They are at best a choices between “almost right” and “probably wrong”.

Drucker describes illuminating decision making stories, incl. those when Sloan Jr said at one of GM top committees “Gentlemen I take we are all in complete agreement to the decisions here – then I propose we postpone further discussion on this matter until our next meeting, to give ourselves time to develop disagreement or perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about”.

Drucker observed that top decisions are not made well by acclamations. They are made well only if they are based on the clash of conflicting views, dialogue between various point of view and choices between different judgments. Does in not reminding you what we call an “open innovation” approach today ?

 

Why else you should read Drucker ? You will learn from Management that the customer never buys a product, but by definition the customer buys the “satisfaction of a want”, and that the most productive innovations are products or services that create new potential of satisfaction.

Drucker will explain you that spirit of performance in a human organization is in fact an act of creation of energy, as company’s energy output is larger than the sum of efforts put in, and that the purpose of organization is to enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

In the end you’d like to set up great company, right?

Dzida !