A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

THE MANAGEMENT CONTROL PANEL ■ 195
Peter didn’t answer the question. “Let’s defer questions of this kind until
we discuss the case. Since you are all eager to get started, we’ll begin immediately
<strong>with</strong> the first question. Who would like to tell us his list of inputs?”
Many hands went up, including mine. Peter called on someone toward
the back of the room. The student’s list was quite long. I thought mine
was lengthy, maybe too long. I had pruned my list to about fifteen items.
I had purposely sought only what I thought to be the main inputs affecting
performance output, recognizing that there would be a cost associated
<strong>with</strong> each measurement. However, I noticed others writing down
inputs they had omitted as the student holding the floor announced his
items one by one.
For the most part, <strong>Drucker</strong> listened <strong>with</strong> no comment. When the student
finished and sat down, <strong>Drucker</strong> asked only whether the student had
used his own company as the source for his inputs. When he answered
that he had, Peter asked the student to identify the industry. Then he asked
for another volunteer from a different industry. Again, many hands were
raised. <strong>Drucker</strong>, called on someone else. This student had a number of
items which the first student had not used, even though the second student’s
list was considerably shorter. After asking this student’s industry,
Peter repeated the process several times.
It soon became evident that a complete list was almost infinite, depending
on your tolerance for using more and more inputs. It was also obvious
that different industries probably considered different inputs more
important than others. After several students, <strong>Drucker</strong> stopped calling
on volunteers.
“I think we can conclude that the number of inputs is limited only by
our imaginations. Also, companies in different industries will consider different
inputs from both the internal and external environments to be basic
drivers to output that should be included,” Peter said. “This is as we might
expect. Basic requirements are different in different businesses; core competencies,
strengths and weaknesses vary from company to company and
are part of this picture. Let’s leave this for a moment except to conclude
that this information and the interaction of the various factors is extremely
useful for a manager making decisions and taking actions to reach the
goals he has set to accomplish. Such a system is not however a control
panel, but rather very much like an instrumentation panel on an aircraft.
“Now, tell me please,” he asked, “what are the advantages and disadvantages
of the Management Control Panel which the president proposes?”