What would Peter F. Drucker Say?

54 years ago Drucker published The Practice of Management. It is without a doubt the most important business book ever written. It is sad how few people in business have actually read it. One passage that I find particularly compelling, highlights how far most organizations are, even today, from understanding what he was talking about over half a century ago.

It is the customer who determines what a business is. For it is the customer, and he alone, who through willing [sic] to pay for a good or for a service, converts economic resources into wealth, things into goods. What the business thinks it produces is not of first importance — especially not to the future of the business and to its success. What a customer thinks he is buying, what he considers “value” is decisive — it determines what a business is, what it produces and whether it will prosper.

The customer is the foundation of a business and keeps it in existence. He alone gives employment. And it is to supply the consumer that society entrusts wealth-producing resources to the business enterprise.

If more companies had heeded this advice, I think the adversarial relationship most people experience with their service providers would not exist today.

So can we turn the tide and look at customers more like partners? I think Drucker would have applauded using the new tools available today to build better relationships between providers of goods and services and their customers. But what exactly will that look like? … Stay tuned.