A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

190 ■ A CLASS WITH DRUCKER
The case concerned the president of a company who had recently
learned about the capabilities of new computers and their application.
After giving this some serious thought, he called for a meeting of the management
hierarchy of the company. He wanted their input for a new management
control system to help run the company and told them of his
plans. He called it a “Management Control Panel.”
Using Technology to Its Fullest
“Management is getting more and more complex in our industry,” the
company president told his top management staff. “Recently I’ve learned
of the capabilities of the latest computers. I think we can be the first in our
industry, maybe in the whole business world, to implement a new concept
which can give us a significant competitive advantage.”
“The idea,” he continued, “is to list all of the primary factors which
affect our business. We’ll use computers to see how these factors work
individually and together to create various quantified outputs. For example,
if the economy changes, it may increase demands for certain of our
products. No doubt our competitors will see the same changes and
increases. The difference will be in response. Do we lower price? Do we
raise it? Do we increase our research and development expenditures?
Decrease them? Perhaps some combination of these options?
“Every change we make affects other important aspects of running our
business,” the company president said. “We’ll be able to immediately see
the changes in output caused by the external environmental or changes we
cause ourselves. We can take advantage of these opportunities to best
achieve our business objectives and to affect our overall performance positively.
Most importantly, the computers will generate an array of correct
actions for us, according to whatever objectives we set and the resources
available. All we will need to do is to implement these actions. We’ll have
the edge over all of our competitors.”
Then he outlined his ideas for implementation. “First, we need to
decide which factors primarily affect what we do,” he said. “I know there
are many, and they affect all of the functional areas, including finance,
marketing, manufacturing, and more. Of course, there are external factors
as well, including our competition, the state of the economy, and the
business in our industry. We’ll need to list them as well. Then, we’ll turn
all of this data over to computer experts to develop the program. It may
take us some time and cost us some money, but it will be well worth it.