Theory of the business

Theory of the business outline

HBR article

  

Amazon Links: Management Rev Ed and Management Cases, Revised Edition

The image below merges the theory of the business with
chapter 2, “Strategy — The New Certainties” in Management Challenges for the 21st Century

The Power and Purpose of Objectives: The Marks & Spencer Story and Its Lessons

Communicate and Test Assumptions

The theory of the business must be known and understood throughout the organization.

This is easy in an organization’s early days.

But as it becomes successful, an organization tends increasingly to take its theory for granted, becoming less and less conscious of it.

Then the organization becomes sloppy.

It begins to cut corners.

It begins to pursue what is expedient rather than what is right.

It stops thinking.

It stops questioning.

It remembers the answers but has forgotten the questions.

The theory of the business becomes “culture.”

But culture is no substitute for discipline, and the theory of the business is a discipline.

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The theory of the business has to be tested constantly.

It is not graven on tablets of stone.

It is a hypothesis.

And it is a hypothesis about things that are in constant flux—society, markets, customers, technology.

And so, built into the theory of the business must be the ability to change itself.

Some theories are so powerful that they last for a long time.

Eventually every theory becomes obsolete and then invalid.

It happened to the GMs and the AT&Ts.

It happened to IBM.

It is also happening to the rapidly unraveling Japanese keiretsu.

4 JUL The Daily Drucker

 

 

A thought collector

Also or mentioned in

Marketing and Innovation in a society moving in time (part of Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices)

A Century of Social Transformation—Emergence of Knowledge Society

About management — actions, principles, essence

Information challenges

Managing In A Time Of Great Change (by Peter Drucker)

Peter Drucker on The Profession Of Management

The Daily Drucker

#tgd

“The greatest danger

in times of turbulence

is not turbulence;

it is to act

with yesterday’s logic”.

— Peter Drucker

The shift from manual workers
who do as they are being told —
either by the task or by the boss —

TO knowledge workers

who have to

manage themselves ↓

profoundly challenges social structure …

“Managing Oneself (PDF) is a REVOLUTION in human affairs.” …



“It also requires an almost 180-degree change in the knowledge workers’ thoughts and actions from what most of us—even of the younger generation—still take for granted as the way to think and the way to act.” …



… “Managing Oneself is based on the very opposite realities:


Workers are likely to outlive organizations
(and therefore, employers can’t be depended on for designing your life),

and the knowledge worker has mobility.” ← in a context

“More than anything else,

the individual
has to take more responsibility
for himself or herself,
rather than depend on the company.”
continue ↓

“Making a living is no longer enough
‘Work’ has to make a life .” continue

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