Drucker on Growth

Peter Drucker had a lot to say about both leadership and growth.  Here is a sampling of his insight:

1. Growth is the result of success, not its cause.  An organization grows because it is doing a good job and thus its products and services generate increasing demand. Borrowing money or hiring people does not create demand, but helps fulfill it.

2. Strategy is ENVISIONING a desired future and simultaneously ACTING NOW to create this desired future. Drucker defined the leader's job as exploiting opportunity, not just replicating past success. This means creating strategy that can be revised when necessary. The leader must be intimately involved with the strategic direction and committed to it.

3. Integrity is essential for leadership. Followers need to understand what drives their leader.  Character and ethical behavior are of central importance for the leader.  One of Drucker's insights is that followers might forgive a leaders for mistakes, but would not forgive a lack of integrity. He understood that the military developed leaders by emphasizing character, role models and "taking care of your people", which is a pretty good example for business organizations as well. 

4. Employees need to be treated like high status volunteers not instantly replaceable "worker bees". Peter came to admire nonprofit organizations in part because of their stress on the need to manage people based on motivations beyond money.  Volunteers are people free to leave at any time.  The effective leader pays great attention to the non-monetary needs and motives of employees which unleashes both motivation and creativity.

6. Great Leaders are both marketers and innovators.  Drucker redefined the idea of "customer" to be the critical link in the economic chain. Not only should business leaders focus on the customer, and how customers view the organization and its products, but that ALL organizations have customers in the sense of active consumers of services. The leader both embodies the organization and is its best representative.