A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

YOU CAN’T PREDICT THE FUTURE ■ 127
drums for the band, but soon developed her voice sufficiently to become
lead singer. She saw to it that a demo tape she had made fell into the right
hands. In 1982, she made her first single, “Everybody,” which became a
hit. She kept working until the future she created was realized, and then
continued to set higher and higher goals for herself. She couldn’t predict
her future, but she could create it—and so she did.
It is clear that regardless of your age, background, or wealth, nothing
seems to matter very much if you commit to creating a future—either your
own or a company’s. Somehow you will find a way of getting the job done.
The Process of Creating Your Future
Peter made it very clear that the process of creating your future, anybody’s
future, begins <strong>with</strong> your goals and objectives. These need to be crystal-clear.
Then you need to determine the actions that must be taken today to achieve
these objectives in the future. <strong>Drucker</strong> said there was danger in assuming
that today’s trends, whatever they are, will continue into the future. This is
where things become a bit tricky. How do you start and yet forget the past?
In analyzing my notes on Peter’s concepts sometime later, I realized
that <strong>Drucker</strong> wasn’t saying what I had first thought. He was not saying that
the planner should forget the past, but rather that one should not assume
that the past or present would continue in the future. Peter wanted us to
focus on future goals first. Then consider what we face today and take the
necessary actions that will point us toward reaching those goals in the
future. As we progress, the environment and conditions are going to
change. We can’t predict these changes. In fact, if we hold to those initial
actions and stay the course, we’re never going to reach the future we are
intent on creating. However, we can and must take new actions to enable
us to make progress toward and reach these future goals.
Consider the astronauts heading for the moon. The astronauts didn’t
calculate a course to the moon and hold that single course the entire
240,000 miles. If they had held to a single course, they would never have
reached the moon. Instead, they made a mid-course correction, and they
were prepared to take other actions and make corrections to get them to
their goal as required.
My Corollary to <strong>Drucker</strong>’s Process
As <strong>Drucker</strong> saw it, one made necessary decisions and continued to focus on
the end objective. You didn’t stay tied to old products, services, customs, or