A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

IF YOU KEEP DOING WHAT WORKED IN THE PAST ■ 53
Air Force ever had. But getting there hadn’t been easy. General Arnold had
fought his entire career for an air force independent of the U.S. Army, <strong>with</strong>
full career opportunities for the pilots who flew the airplanes which made
up any air force. Previously, when the Air Force had been under the control
of non-flying senior officers of the Army, pilots were allowed to command
only flying organizations. They were rarely permitted to head up the
non-flying divisions, corps, and armies, <strong>with</strong>out which they could not
reach the top posts in the U.S. Army.
Soon after the United States Air Force was created, and despite a lifetime
of fighting for this flying air force and equal career opportunities for
pilots, General Arnold wrote words then considered heresy by those who
flew. He said that Air Force officers must be flexible and forward looking
in their vision of the future of this new military service. “There will come
a day,” he stated, “when the airplane will be outmoded as a weapon system
and the Air Force must be ready to adopt other means of fulfilling its
mission.” General Arnold said this at a time when airplanes were the
essential vehicles in the Air Force’s arsenal. Space weaponry and other
unmanned systems didn’t exist except as experimental prototypes in our
military. Today, missiles and even unmanned flying machines take an
increasingly larger share of the Air Force mission.
Asking Questions the <strong>Drucker</strong> Way
As a management technique, <strong>Drucker</strong> was famous for asking questions
of his consultant clients. Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric,
has been called the pre-eminent CEO of the 20th century. He was also
the youngest CEO in GE’s history. When he became CEO in 1981, the
company’s market value was about $12 billion. When he left, it was
worth more than 25 times that figure. According to Welch, <strong>Drucker</strong>’s two
simple questions helped propel him to this amazing feat. The first question
was, “If you weren’t already in the business, would you enter it
today?” This <strong>Drucker</strong> followed <strong>with</strong> a second, more difficult question,
“What are you going to do about it?” According to Welch, <strong>Drucker</strong>’s
questions led him to shed unprofitable businesses and streamline GE
into its extraordinary success.
I have heard that some forward thinkers in the airline industry are
anticipating the day when business travelers, a major source of revenue,
are no more. How are they approaching this? Let’s imagine we are these