Peter Drucker's Five Most Important Questions: Enduring Wisdom for Today's Leaders

by Peter F. Drucker, Frances Hesselbein, Joan Snyder Kuhl

Enduring Management Wisdom for Today's Leaders From Peter F. Drucker. Peter Drucker's Five Most Important Questions provides insightful guidance and stirring inspiration for today's leaders and entrepreneurs. By applying Drucker's leadership framework in the present context of today's leaders and those who lead with them, this book is an essential resource for people leading, managing and working in all three sectors—public, private and social. Readers will gain new perspectives and develop a solid foundation upon which to build a successful and bright future. They will learn how to focus on why they are doing what they're doing, how to do it better, and how to develop a realistic, motivational plan for achieving their goals. This brief, clear, and accessible guide — peppered with commentary from distinguished management gurus, contemporary entrepreneurs and dynamic millennial leaders —will challenge readers and stimulate spirited discussion and action within any organization, inspiring positive change and new levels of excellence. In addition to contributions from Jim Collins, Marshall Goldsmith, and Judith Rodin, the book features new insights from some of today's most influential leaders in business (GE and Salesforce.com), academia (Harvard Business School and Northwestern University), social enterprise (Levo League, Pencils of Promise and Why Millennials Matter) and the military (United States Military Academy), who have been directly influenced by Drucker's theory of management.

Genres: Business, Leadership, Nonfiction, Management

96 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 23, 2015

About the author

Peter Ferdinand Drucker was a writer, management consultant and university professor. His writing focused on management-related literature. Peter Drucker made famous the term knowledge worker and is thought to have unknowingly ushered in the knowledge economy, which effectively challenges Karl Marx's world-view of the political economy. George Orwell credits Peter Drucker as one of the only writers to predict the German-Soviet Pact of 1939.

The son of a high level civil servant in the Habsburg empire, Drucker was born in the chocolate capital of Austria, in a small village named Kaasgraben (now a suburb of Vienna, part of the 19th district, Döbling). Following the defeat of Austria-Hungary in World War I, there were few opportunities for employment in Vienna so after finishing school he went to Germany, first working in banking and then in journalism. While in Germany, he earned a doctorate in International Law. The rise of Nazism forced him to leave Germany in 1933. After spending four years in London, in 1937 he moved permanently to the United States, where he became a university professor as well as a freelance writer and business guru. In 1943 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He taught at New York University as a Professor of Management from 1950 to 1971. From 1971 to his death he was the Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at Claremont Graduate University.

Reviews

[Clairdenoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

#ตอบ 5 คำถามนี้ไม่ได้ ก็อย่าทำธุรกิจเลย
#ปีเตอร์ เอเอฟ. ดรัคเกอร์ (สมญานามท่านคือ:บิดาแห่งการบริหารจัดการยุคใหม่)
#นี้คือบันทึกการอ่าน

1.ดูจากหน้าตาตัวเองประเมินได้ว่าต้องอ่านรอบเดียวแน่ๆ><ดังนั้นเจออยู่ในชั้นปุ๊บต้องอ่านให้จบวันนั้นปั๊บเพราะถ้าค้างไว้จะต้องดองแน่นอน100%
2.อ่านตอนเช้าตรู่ สมองยังไม่ตื่นดี ยังไม่เรื่องเยอะ ก็อ่านเพลินดีนะ นับเป็นเล่มเปิดตัววันเสาร์ที่19 ตุลาคม 2019ได้อย่างดูดือ มีหลักการ วันนี้ต้องเป็นวันที่ดือแน่ๆ!//เอ่าๆรีบพิมพ์ๆให้จบจะได้ไปกินข้าวเช้าทำงงทำงานซะที เร้วว555

3.ตามความเข้าใจมันคือการประเมินองค์กร และกำหนดแผนการขององค์กร มียกตัวอย่างที่ทำให้เข้าใจได้ง่าย เนื้อหาก็ออกแนวเลคเชอร์ และยกตัวอย่างกรณีศึกษาต่างๆมาอธิบายให้เห็นเป็นรูปธรรมมากขึ้น อ่านง่าย เข้าใจได้ง่าย ขั้นตอนยากจริงๆคือหลังจากนั้น ตอนที่ลงมือทำจริง

4.คำถาม5ข้อตามชื่อหนังสือ
(1.) ภารกิจขององค์กรคืออิหยัง?
(ต้องไม่ยาวเกินไปสามารถพิมพ์ลงเสื้อได้พอดี)
ชอบนี้...
:คำประกาศอุดมการณ์ของบริษัทโฮลสตี

(2.)ใครคือกลุ่มเป้าหมายขององค์กร
(ระบุกลุ่มเป้าหมายหลัก/กลุ่มเป้าหมายสนับสนุน/การทำความเข้าใจกลุ่มเป้าหมาย)
(3.)สิ่งใดที่ทำให้กลุ่มเป้าหมายพึงพอใจ
(สมมติฐานคือ สิ่งที่พวกเขาต้องการจะสมเหตุสมผลเสมอ)
(4.)ผลการดำเนินงานเป็นอย่างไร
(คือหัวใจสำคัญต่อการอยู่รอด)
(5.)องค์กรมีกลยุทธ์ในการดำเนินงานอย่างไร
(-หากมีไอเดียดีแต่ปราศจากแผนการที่ชัดเจน ไอเดียเหล่านี้ก็จะเป็นเพียงแค่ความคิด
-คนเรา สวดภาวนาเพื่อให้เกิดปาฏิหารย์ แต่เราทำงานเพื่อให้บรรลุผลสำเร็จ
-การกำหนดแผนการเพื่อเปลี่ยนไอเดียดีๆให้กลายเป็นความจริง/ตั้งคำถาม4ข้อคือ(p.145)
1.ปัญหาหลักที่พยายามแก้ไขคือ?
2.จะทำให้ห่วงโซ่คุณค่า(Value Chain)สมบูรณ์ได้อย่างไร
3.วางแผนที่จะเปิดตัวสินค้าอย่างไร?
4.กลยุทธ์ทางออกคืออะไร?)
p.186คือส่วนสรุปของทั้ง5ข้อ
"ส่วนที่สำคัญ ที่สุดของเครื่องมือและวิธีการประเมินผลก็คือการตั้งคำถาม
คำตอบนั้นก็สำคัญเช่นกัน เพราะมันจะนำมาซึ่งการลงมือปฏิบัติ ฉะนั้นสิ่งสำคัญที่สุดก็คือการตั้งคำถาม"
---ปีเตอร์ เอเอฟ. ดรัคเกอร์

ส่วนสุดท้ายของหนังสือตั้งแต่p.202ไปจนจบคือประวัติคร่าวๆของคนที่มาร่วมแบ่งปันประสบการณ์ในเล่มนี้
เราสะดุดตาชื่อและนามสกุลของคุณรากู กฤษณะมูรติ--
-เย้!..จบ-

[Michael Huang]

Five pretty to-the-point questions to ask to better run your organization:

1. What is our mission? (An ER changed its mission from "healthcare" to "to give assurance to the afflicted" and this helps the staff understand their mission and priorities better.

2. Who is our customer? (There may be secondary customers, e.g., in a school, the primary customers are the students, but teachers, parents etc. are the secondary customers.)

3. What does our customer value? (Clarifying this is important. For instance, it turns out a shelter's customers don't really care about clean bed and hot meal but care more about having a place to not be homeless.)

4. What are our results? (This can be qualitative results such as impacting someone's life in meaningful ways.)

5. What is our plan? (Once we ask ourselves 1-4, it's time to figure out a plan to move to the objectives.)

[Chayong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blinkist summary:


The first question is “What is our mission?” It’s the number one question because it identifies the objectives and goals that you and your organization are aiming to fulfill. The answer to the question is no less than the primary reason for your organization’s existence, and therefore it will be the guiding force and the common bond that holds your organization together.

Given how important your mission statement is, you should take care to make sure it accurately reflects the commitment, ability and hope of the organization. However, the statement should still be both accurate and concise enough to fit on a t-shirt.


Therefore, the second question for a successful organization is “Who is our customer?”

In answering this question, you should be careful to distinguish between your primary customers and supporting customers; so that you’re focusing on the primary while making sure the supporting aren’t neglected.

A primary customer is one whose life is directly changed by your product or service.

A supporting customer is someone who you want to satisfy, but isn’t the focus of your mission.


The next question is one that gets ignored more than all others, yet it’s essential for every organization: “What does our customer value?”

By asking this question, you can avoid the pitfall of assuming what your customer wants, and instead get valuable feedback directly. When you have a deep understanding of your primary customer’s values, you’ll be in a position to maximize your ability to satisfy your customers’ needs.


Recognizing the kind of results that your organization should be judged on is the key to success.

The role of good leadership is to know what needs to be fixed to achieve the organization’s mission. This means keeping a keen eye on performance and how it measures up against criteria. For this to happen, you need to ask the fourth question: “What are our results?”

In focusing your attention on results, it’s important to recognize that long-term success often comes from short-term accomplishments. When thinking of the results you hope to achieve, make sure to think both long and short-term.

Appraising your performance will also help you with the last question.


A good plan of action keeps you focused on your objectives and sets out a way to achieve them.

The final question every organization needs to ask is “What is our plan?”

Any good plan should take into account all the important things, including your mission, vision, goals, objectives, action steps, budget and results. Planning should also include the uncertainty of the current business climate, define the specific place you want to take your organization and how you intend to get there.

An effective plan should lay out your overarching goals in a way that translates into concrete steps – in turn leading to specific objectives.

So, what kind of goals should you set for yourself? A smart set of goals should correspond to your desired future, and describe the long-range direction you need to take to get there. However, an effective plan shouldn’t have more than five goals; otherwise your attention and efforts will be spread too thin.

The key message in these blinks:

To truly bring success to your organization, you need to ask yourself the following five questions:
• What is our mission?
• Who is our customer?
• What does the customer value?
• What are our results?
• What is our plan?
Actionable advice:

Look to other successful organizations.

Next time you hear about a successful organization, think about what makes them successful. What is their mission? Do they have a deep understanding of what their customers value? Work through the five questions to get a better understanding where their success comes from.

[Qasim Ahmad Ilyas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came to know the Peter Drucker, among others, through books written on advance and challenging economic theories and practices and management literature. Peter Drucker, known as the father of management sciences, is rightly credited for his immense understanding of managerial leadership in a capitalistic system. The management literature and activism that he has propounded and advanced are core of his principles. What the Management by Objective (MBO), an original off-spring of P. Drucker, has achieved, or dis-achieved, remains open to debate. There are concerns that the MBO has depersonalized the relation between the upper and lower stratum of organizations. More particularly MBO has eroded humane side of employees, and has rendered the employees more like physical capital whereby the employers are able to exert more control on their assets for achieving the desired organizational goals. Breaking from this line of arguments, however, Peter Drucker's Five Most Important Questions: Enduring Wisdom for Today's Leaders conceptualizes his core understanding of managerial capitalism. Taking this further, the book has short-essays on the question under considerations from the modern management executives who have augmented Druckerian management in practice. Nevertheless, as discussed earlier, the orientation of Druckerian management suits well for capitalistic organizations where numbers do matter and performances are evaluated accordingly, where teamwork is rewarded because of numbers-do-matter. However, Peter'Drucker's Management by Objectives, vaguely referenced in the book, is one of the causes of rising corporatocracy. Rest, the book is good read for those who are interested in management of Druckerian style.

[Mark Manderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anything from Drucker is foundational. He's always asking who is our customer? What is our value? What is our plan? What results are we after?
Takeaways:
8 out of every 10 businesses that start fail well within the first 10 months of ever starting.
Planning is not an event is the continuous process of strengthening what works and abandoning what does not. 
Self-assessment is a prerequisite to be a good leader.

[Alex Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a ton of great material in here and I took a number of ideas from its pages, but I feel like I was missing a complimentary book or other information or experience set to provide context to many of these passages. The "Millennial Takeaways" felt unexpectedly dated, even a mere six years after publication, now that Millennials are turning 40 and deeply entrenched in civic and commercial leadership positions.

[Agustinus Lawandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personal summary
What is your mission? This is the guiding force of the organization.
Who is your key customer? Prioritize, these are the people you want to focus on.
What does the customer value? Give them what they want.
What are the results? To improve, we need to measure and analyze.
What is the plan? Align with the goal, create a draft, and revise often.

[Paul, · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simple book full of simple questions. But they are crucial questions and they are very difficult to answer. I didn't find most of the additional text (esp those by the younger millennial leaders) very helpful. But I highly recommend the book for those involved in the non-profit world.

[David Van Brakle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Drucker, and this was a great overview of some of his work. I liked the Millennial responses and enjoyed reading some newer business leaders in the responses. It felt light, however, compared to Drucker's book "Managing the Non-Profit Organization."

[Nadeen Matthews · Rating 3 out of 5]

May be a good refresher for some and a breakthrough for non profit leaders with little business experience but for me, there were no new insights. Very generic stories and anecdotes to make points not supported by any empirical data. The Audible narrator made it feel like a really long lecture.

[Joe DeGraaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every leader and manager should read this book. Through its simple five questions with value-packed details and depth, this book by Drucker and various other leaders who add their comments is well worth the short read.

[Nady Elshiekh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks

[Michael Czapla · Rating 4 out of 5]

too short

[Dragon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book contains many essays written by other authors. I will simply suggest read Druckers essay only.

[Armando Zamora · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es una edición en la cual se toma una enseñanza de Peter Drucker y los otros autores comentan sobre ese tema. Interesante pero el libro no es 100% de Drucker

[Iain Hamill · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good one to review ahead of starting a new role.

[JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Drucker's wisdom is always so amazingly simple. In this book, written ten years after his passing, collaborators build on his core model to create an update of the key elements especially relevant to the latest trends toward social causes and the Millennial generation.