A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

48 ■ A CLASS WITH DRUCKER
“That’s very interesting,” said <strong>Drucker</strong>. “But what do you do when your
environment changes?”
“I’m not sure what you are getting at,” said my classmate, a little testily.
“If the environment changes, we make the changes necessary in the product
or procedures to accommodate changes in the environment. We just
keep making it better. Once we find a success, we concentrate on making
it better and staying ahead of our competition,” he repeated. “That way
our competition never catches up.”
Peter put down his knife and fork and thought for a moment. Then he
spoke. “I congratulate you on your and your company’s success. However,
I must tell you that your modeling strategy will work in the short term
only. In the longer term, unless you have thought ahead to create your
own future, any organization which continues to do what brought it success
in the past will eventually fail. Moreover, when a significant change
occurs, unless management is willing to quickly readjust to the new situation
in which it finds itself and instead tries to optimize the old model, it
will fail even faster.”
<strong>Drucker</strong> Explains His Lesson
The student blanched slightly, but said nothing. The rest of us waited to
hear a fuller explanation.
“Look,” Peter continued, “every environment changes. Eventually that
change is sufficiently severe that you cannot adapt either a product or a
procedure, no matter what you do. Sometimes this change is technological.
Someone invents a mass-produced automobile. Think what this invention
did to the buggy whip or the carriage industries—it destroyed them
completely, and in a very short period of time.
“However, the change in the environment can be cultural, political, or
something else. You mentioned NASA, so my guess is that this may be
your only customer in this market for this particular product. What if
NASA as a customer disappears or its funding is severely curtailed? Such
changes do not cause incremental results. They are revolutionary.
“So long as your environment is fairly stable,” he explained, “your
company’s actions are correct, and I am not suggesting that they should
be discarded. However, you must be prepared for major change in the
future, and you must start now. If someone else’s revolutionary innovation
catches you unawares, you must abandon what made you successful