Week 46 of 52. Welcome to Drucker Mondays, a 52-week journey through the book, A Year with Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness, by Joseph A. Maciariello. Each Monday, we feature a Drucker fan and his or her favorite snippet from the week's topic. (Subscribe on this page.) Rick Bee is our guest writer today.
Week 46: The Stewardship of Affluence and the Stewardship of Influence
THE BIG IDEA FROM THE BOOK: With the writing and success of his book, The Purpose Driven Life, pastor and author Rick Warren, and his wife, Kay, were confronted with a question, “How should we deal with this unexpected affluence and influence?”
RICK BEE'S FAVORITE DRUCKER INSIGHTS from Week 46, pages 357-363:
• “I think the balance between maintaining internal dynamics and institutionalization is a very delicate one. And eventually, one always institutionalizes or one dissipates…”
• “Neither studies nor market research nor computer modeling are a substitute for the test of reality. Everything improved or new needs, therefore, first to be tested on a small scale, that is, it needs to be piloted.”
• “There are a few common mistakes in doing anything new. One is to go from idea into full-scale operation. Don’t omit testing the idea. Don’t omit the pilot stage. If you do, and skip from concept to full scale, even tiny and correctable flaws will destroy the innovation. . . . Another common mistake is to patch-up the old rather than to go all out for the new. . . . It is one of the critical tasks of the executive to know when to say, ‘Enough is enough. Let’s stop Improving. There are too many patches on those pants.’”
RICK BEE'S COLOR COMMENTARY:
Few healthy businesses have the luxury of just doing business as usual. In fact innovation and change remain a top priority for leadership in most organizations that seek to retain their market share! Whether the product is smart phones or a college education, nothing can make an organization as competitive and sought after in the marketplace as innovation and a better delivery system.
However, Drucker gives some great advice in this week’s reading as he counsels to be sure and “test the idea!” How many organizations have we observed are first to market with an untested product—only to discover that no one cares! Or…we find some small flaw in the programming that puts the very survival of the organization at risk.
Equally as important is Drucker’s second great advice from this text. And that is to not just patch up the old, but rather to go all out for the new. His challenge to business leaders is a strong call to know when to say, “Enough!”
Sounds to me like a great call to creatively crafted and tested innovation in our companies.
THIS WEEK'S QUOTES & COMMENTARY BY RICK BEE:
Dr. Rick Bee is the Senior Director of Alumni and Parents at Biola University. Rick and his wife, Julie, live in Yorba Linda, Calif., where they are active and involved in the Yorba Linda Friends Church. Rick and Julie love international travel and have toured more than 25 countries visiting the alumni and friends of Biola University. (Rick also was the guest writer for Week 36 on “Diffusion of Innovation—Public Schools.”)
TO-DO TODAY:
• So where can you bring innovation to your company?
• Where and what is the next big thing for your business and how can you get there in a tested and strategic way?
• The model of Rick and Kay Warren’s success provides not only great insight into creating a vision and impact greater than oneself, but of doing it in a way that is guaranteed to succeed. How can you implement such a plan today?
Read Bob Buford's Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition), with a foreword by Jim Collins (published this month with more than 750,000 previously sold).
NEXT MONDAY:
On Nov. 23, 2015, watch for Carolyn McOwen's color commentary on Week 47’s topic, “Making Ourselves Useful to Others and to Ourselves” the fourth chapter in the book’s final section, “Character and Legacy.”
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