Warm up
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- What industry do you work in and what is your role?
- What are your responses in your role / position?
- Can you describe to the function of your workplace / company?
- How many departments, how many offices. National or International?
- What are the minimum requirements for employment ie Education or Experience?
- How many opportunities are there to ‘move up the ladder’?
- What is the process for changing job roles ie Interview? Test?
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- Current projects? Deadlines? Opportunities?
- Anything of interest happening?
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1. The greatest thinkers in history are those who sum up vast arrays of previously unconnected phenomena in a single sentence that is surprising at the time, yet obvious in retrospect, and understandable by everyday people.
Is there any quote, phrase or sentence that has captured your imagination? Who said it? What does it mean to you?
2. In physics, Albert Einstein illuminated the structure of the universe with “E=MC2”. Copernicus transformed astronomy with his insight that the Earth rotates around the Sun, not vice versa. In articulating the principle of gravity, Isaac Newton clarified what was hiding from us in plain sight.
3. And .Peter Drucker provided the guiding star of the discipline of management with his single sentence: “There is only one valid purpose of a corporation: to create a customer.” Only one.
What do you think of the quote in the text above? Do you agree with it? Why or why not?
4. This sentence appeared first in his 1954 book, The Practice of Management (Harper & Brothers), and was repeated, word for word, in his 1973 magnum opus. It was the foundational insight of his 1985 book Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HarperCollins) and remained a constant thread throughout all his 39 books.
5. Drucker saw that a company’s primary responsibility is to create value for its customers. The corporation must do many other things as well—create great workplaces, and do right by partners, society, the environment, and shareholders. But customers must come first: the customer is the boss. Profit is a result, not the primary goal: creating value for customers is the essential condition for the company’s continued existence and sustainability.
6. Of all Drucker’s insights, identifying the purpose of a firm in a single pithy sentence is his most profound. In retrospect, we can see that it was true, even before he articulated it. It showed why some corporations had prospered, while others had not.
Can you think of a great businessperson or company that found success? What did they do? How did they do it?
7. Today, almost seven decades later, we can see that Drucker was prescient in foreseeing that power in the marketplace would increasingly shift from the corporation to the customer and that creating value for the customer would become ever more central. In the first two decades of the 21st century, firms that truly prioritize the centrality of the customer have become the first trillion-dollar companies, while the former giants of the 20th century like GE and IBM, which paid no more than lip service to the customer, have struggled.
Can you think of a company that failed? Why do you think it failed?
