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| Fifths Week: |
Managing yourself --- How to be a change leader |
| Toyokeizai: Drucker is also well known as an authority of innovation. | ||
Society develops through continuity and change. How can we attain both? This has been Drucker's concern carried on since he was young, around in his twenties. This is also applied to the organization. The organization will decline if it depends only on continuity. In a changing society where knowledge is placed at the center, there is no future if the organization depends only on continuity. On the other hand, depending only on change, the organization cannot have any accumulated knowledge nor community. The organization must internalize mechanisms for change and keep changing. Change is abandonment, improvement, development and innovation. This is, as Drucker says, the essence of the requirement to be a change leader. Drucker has practiced it himself. In order to be a change leader and to gain prosperity, innovation is indispensable. Drucker describes innovation together with marketing as two indispensable functions for all organizations. The organization becomes unstable as soon as it seeks stability. Soon, another company or industry will take over its market. Especially after the IT revolution, this is more likely true. A company that has never been heard of, or an industry irrelevant before will take over the market. In the coming age of e-commerce, anything can happen and anybody can do anything. Many brands will lose their market one after another. To make oneself obsolete in order to survive One cannot know what the future brings. That's why one himself needs to make his own future. One has to realize that he has to make himself obsolete. That is, after all, less risky. From now on, not for the cutting-edge position, but for survival, being a change leader is required for any organizations. For that purpose, one has to establish a spirit of change in the organization. Thankfully, Drucker teaches us the discipline of entrepreneurship in his book "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" (1985). When Drucker approached this field in the middle of the 1950's, he was teaching at a night seminar at New York University graduate school where corporate executives and NPO leaders were learning. At that time, Drucker has researched over 1000 cases of innovation. The method of innovation that Drucker teaches us is not based on supposition. In the knowledge society, change is ordinary state. Naturally organizations have to keep changing. Then, management ability in each person will be brought into full play. The ability needed now is not management of continuity but of change. From management for continuity, which was developed between 1900 to 1965, now we need management for change. Drucker says the days from 1900 to 1965 were the age of continuity. Yes, indeed, it was right. Most of the major industries nowadays were born in the last half of 19th century. Not only each business but also industry itself will start to decline if it neglects innovation. Products and services will become commodities. Other industries with new products or services enter into the market. It is the typical condition that the financial service industry finds itself in. With the IT revolution as a tail wind, even convenience stores have penetrated into financial services in Japan. This is because finance services have become commodities. Convenience stores deal with commodities much better than the financial service industry. The financial services industry has not had innovation for nearly 30 years. If so, it is only individual loans by cards. Derivatives are nothing but a technique resulting into a zero sum game within the industry. An article that Drucker wrote two years ago, 'Innovate or Die ---Drucker on Financial Services' (The Economist, 9/25/1999) had great impact on the world's financial service industry. So, how many Shibusawas has appeared after Eiichi Shibusawa? One Japanese entrepreneur whom Drucker evaluates most is Eiichi Shibusawa who built some six or seven hundred business in the dawn of modern Japan. These things are also true for non-profit organizations, and of course for governmental institutions. | ||
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Continuing education should be habitual For anyone to reach an average standard at anything that he is not good at takes a lot of time, efforts and cost. It is very difficult. However, attaining first-class at something that he is good at is easy. In the future, nobody will go to a school or college where one cannot bring out his own talent in a field of his strength. School must become an institution that extends one's strength, not making up for weakness. On that day, we could say we had accomplished an educational revolution, Drucker says. It is inevitable that the total amount of knowledge required becomes massive. Then, higher education will not be finished up by attending college from 18 to 22 years old, but by coming back to college every three to five years to gain new knowledge and then returning to the job. In short, this feed back between learning and practice will become a must. It is especially true in cutting-edge fields such as medicine, IT, biotechnology, environment and so on. While the driver's license is needed to update, somehow in Japan, updating of the doctor's license is not obligatory. In the knowledge society, continuing education and learning must be a way of life. Everybody has to engage in self-enlightenment. Here, Drucker says one has to place himself where he belongs. Know thy strengths The knowledge worker survives longer than the organization where he works. According to the average life span nowadays, one has to prepare oneself to live eighty years or more. It might be part time, but one can work until the age of seventy-five or so. Such society will appear unexpectedly soon. While the aging part of the population keeps growing, the productivity of the modern society is not so high to have the mandatory retirement age set at sixty. Drucker is very specific here also. If the retirement age of sixty were set, society could not bear the burden of the support. Prolonging or dissolving the retirement age is a social need. The worker, especially the knowledge worker, naturally prefers to keep working. In this way, the average working life span will stretch to fifty years. Indeed as a respected Japanese Buddhist priest said, if a person were a flower, the age of fifty or sixty would be a bud, and the age of seventy or eighty would be a full bloom. When I turned sixty, Drucker wrote me that life would be more interesting from then on, and that his own productivity had grown really after the age of sixty. The average span of a company is thirty years or so. In this turbulent time it is difficult for a company to survive this average. Even organizations, which are supposed to last long, such as educational institutions, hospitals, and government institutions, can have no choice but to change dramatically. Even if these organizations can survive, their structures, jobs and knowledge cannot help but changing. The knowledge workers from now on will survice longer than the organization that they work for. On this assumption, Drucker says one has to make a plan for his life. The important thing here is that one must know his strengths early. Many people think that they know their own strengths. However, in most cases, this is wrong. What a person knows at best is what he is not good at. It is all right, in case of hobby, to keep trying one's favorite thing that he is not so good at, but it is no good for a case of job. One can accomplish something only with his strengths. With his weakness, he cannot accomplish anything. Thankfully here lies an advantage of the organization. In an organization, we can bring an individual's strengths into play and make his weakness irrelevant. Those who say "I am stronger and I will survive longer than my company. I need not to depend on it." are more valuable for the company than those who say "My company is stronger and will survive longer than I. I will be safe to depend on it." The same can be said regarding how to work. People work differently. That is personality. Drucker says personality is formed much before one starts his career, though no one knows whether it is by nature or by breeding. But it is formed very early. Therefore one's way of working is innate as his strengths. It is given. It is hard to change or at least not easy to change. It is not difficult to find one's own strengths and way of working. It may take a few years. However, one can find out in which field and by which way of working one can bring good results. To find these things out, Drucker recommends feedback analysis, which was adapted from Jesuits and Calvinists in the middle of the sixteenth century. When beginning something big, one writes down the results he expects beforehand, and a few months later, compares them with actual results. Analyzing the expected and actual results, one can find out his own strengths and way of working. Give priority to one's value Drucker says a problem rises when one's strengths are different from his value. Then one has to give priority to his value. It may not be easy when business climate is bad, but he had better change career. He has to make a move to find where he belongs. Companies as well as industries have their own values. And people have also their own values. In order to be effective, those values have to fit each other. Values need not to be the same but have to be coexistent. Otherwise work cannot be either interesting or effective. Strengths and the way of working will usually match up. Both are frequently related. However, it happens that the thing that one can do well, can do especially well or best, does not fit with his values. One can neither feel his contribution to society nor think it is worthwhile spending his whole life or a part of his life. Drucker himself came to know the disparity between his strength and values. In the middle of the 1930's, he was under full sail at an investment bank in London. He was fully able to bring his strength to bear. However, with moneymaking he did not feel contributing to society nor worthwhile for himself. For Drucker, values were not in money but in people. He could not find any values in becoming rich. In the middle of the Depression, he did not have much money or any alternative jobs. But he quit the bank. It was the right action. After all, the priority was on his values. In this way, only when one can get the answers for these three questions---what is his strength? what is his way of working? what are his values? ---he can find where he belongs. Where to belong However, in one's youth when he just started working, it is not easy to find where he belongs. There are only a few people who can know where they belong. Even those who have tremendous strengths cannot know where they belong until their late twenties. Even they need feedback analysis. By this analysis, one will come to know his strengths and his way of working. If one finds out these things, one will know where he belongs, and where he does not belong. Consequently, Drucker says, if one finds out that he is not effective in a big organization, he has to decline whatever position he is offered. The best job cannot be done by planning. By knowing one's strengths, his way of working and his own values, he can prepare to perform his best. Because, by knowing where he belongs, an ordinary man without any special talent, but who is competent and hard working will perform a first class work. Drucker explains these things in detail in "Management Challenge for the 21st Century" (1999). Life is a one-time thing. Seeking something of no value to oneself is just a waste. Drucker knows it by himself. He quit a job without any prospects, and went to the United States to start a new life. Other important things that one should know about himself are whether he can perform better in a tense situation or a stable one, and as a decision-maker or an adviser. There are not so many who have no preferences. There is a man who is successful as a decision-maker with a good advisor. On the contrary, a man who has done a great work as Number Two does not know what to do when given a top position. The conclusion is that we should not try to change ourselves drastically. It will not work well. Rather we should bring out our strengths, our way of working and our values. These are what Drucker teaches us. | ||
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Two books to recommend: "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" (1985), Diamond "Management Challenge for the 21st Century" (1999), Diamond |
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