As I was coming of age as a manager I discovered the work of Peter Drucker, one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. It was Drucker who taught me to embrace ambiguity and that the best way to predict the future was to create it.
Drucker taught that business should meet unmet needs. So I built a business around the concept that the, “Purpose of a company is to create a customer – a happy customer.” In his time, Drucker taught that to “Satisfy the customer is the mission and purpose of every business.” I took it a bit further in order to update it for this century. To create consistently positive experiences for the customer is the core of the mission and purpose of every organization. It’s the heartbeat that activates the mission and propels the purpose into the world – attracting customers, employees and investors.
Drucker’s common sense approach taught me to challenge all my assumptions. I discovered that every time your world changes, you have to rethink who you are, where you are going, what you will do and how you will do it.
That’s why I’m spending the first half of this year turning my Positive Leadership Workshop into a robust E-Learning course to help guide you as you redefine who you are and who and what you want to be. One thing we now know for sure – happier companies are more profitable companies.
Drucker believed that every company has its own view of where its business is and what its own beliefs are about how business operates.
Because assumptions – and beliefs – shape our behavior, dictate our decisions of what to do and not to do, and define our meaningful results, it’s critically important for a leader to become comfortable challenging assumptions and beliefs (theirs and others) and opening their minds to new possibilities.
You form your theory of business pretty early on and it resides, along with your values and beliefs, in the “invisible” part of the business, the culture. It isn’t until you begin to question your assumptions to see if they are still valid that you can see where you might need to change yourself, your processes or your way of thinking.
Question your assumptions often. Be thorough and test them. When they no longer fit reality, change them.
Lots to think about,
JoAnna
