DRUCKER ON THE FUNCTIONS OF MANAGEMENT (CROWN AS KING)
Use as your foundational management beliefs. Everything you do should flow from these fundamental statements. All else is embroidery.
Many people believe that Peter Drucker was the first true genius that the study of management produced. He helped establish the discipline of management and foresaw numerous trends in management many years in advance of anyone else. For example, he wrote about decentralisation in the 1940s, coined the term ‘the knowledge economy’ in 1969 and was talking about the social responsibilities of managers in the 1970s.
It was Drucker who in plain English suggested that the purpose of every business organisation was to create and maintain a customer. He didn’t talk about maximising profits. He knew that only by building and maintaining customers can a business hope to make a profit, because it’s customers that create profits.
DRUCKER ALSO ARGUED THAT MANAGERS WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR:
Setting the organisation’s/team’s objectives.
Providing and organising the resources required to achieve the objectives.
Motivating staff to achieve the objectives.
Monitoring staff performance against the objectives.
Improving performance by continually developing themselves and their staff.
Drucker’s insights into the purpose of a business and the responsibilities of managers encapsulate the essence of both business and management theory.
HOW TO USE IT
- Identify who your customers are. Ask yourself: Who buys my goods or services? If you deal with the public this may be obvious, but if you provide a service to other parts of your organisation it may be more difficult.
- Once you have identified your customers ask: Am I meeting their needs? What can I do to enhance the service or product I provide? (see Section 10). Based upon your answers, develop a plan to provide customers with the best possible service.
- Provide targets and objectives for all staff. Set 80% of the targets at a level that is relatively easy for staff to achieve. This will turn people on to success and motivate them to meet the more challenging targets (see Theory 97).
- Monitor performance. Establish a reporting system that shows performance against target, explains the reason for any discrepancies and is produced in time for you to take corrective action quickly.
- Constantly monitor the physical and staffing resources that you need to achieve your targets and take action to remedy any shortfalls before they become a problem.
- Motivate and communicate with your staff by sharing information and listening to what they have to say (see Section 3).
- You are your own greatest asset. Invest time and energy in developing both your technical and managerial skills. Keep yourself marketable. Attend interviews regularly and, if asked to define management or the role of managers, trot out Drucker’s list of management responsibilities as if they were your own. Your staff are your second greatest asset so develop, train and support them.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
- Do I really think of myself as a manager and act accordingly?
- Do I see my job in terms of the work I do or helping others do their job?