The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization

Peter Drucker, King of management gurus, has five essential questions for every organization. This book includes content from five of today’s thought leaders, to supplement Drucker's questions and bring them up to date.

You can use this book as a tool for self-assessment. In the words of one reviewer "...answering these five questions will fundamentally change the way you work, helping you lead your organization to an exceptional level of performance."

Peter Drucker’s five questions are:  

 

What is our Mission? with Jim Collins 

Who is our Customer? with Phil Kotler

What does the Customer Value? with Jim Kouzes 

What are our Results? with Judith Rodin

What is our Plan? with V.Kasturi Rangan

 

I have recently worked with a couple of organizations who have looked at themselves closely in terms of the five questions and who are entering the new decade with a completely reshaped vision of themselves.  

One large non-profit had to ask the hard question:  Who are we here to serve?  Their customers were not only the members of society served by their community impact delivery, but also the donors, volunteers and others who had to be engaged by the organization's mission.  In these difficult times this non-profit is providing real leadership on the new "business as usual" and managing to maintain their donor and volunteer base.

 

Another client is a project team leading a significant ERP implementation across a 3,000 employee organization.  Over the last six months or so they have been looking very carefully at what their (internal) customers value, and the results they are really there to deliver.  As a result their "go-lives" are customer focused and the departments they work with are partners in ensuring everything goes smoothly.

 

The five questions could be obvious, (see my Monty Python article), but the depth of analysis enables this book to be a real breakthrough framework for many.