Peter Drucker's Way to the Top

by William Cohen

  When I was growing up my father was in the Air Force and we moved around a lot. Being from a military family I was from a different culture and sometimes the children at school made fun of me since none of them were from military families. Consequently, I lacked self-confidence and performed poorly. One day we had elections for student government. Almost as a joke one of my classmates nominated me as one of the five candidates for president. The class snickered. I tried to decline, but the teacher encouraged me, so I accepted the nomination. All candidates had to give an election speech. I discovered that this is why my classmates nominated me. They knew that I would do poorly and looked forward to embarrassing me. To get the parents involved, they were to act as campaign managers and assist in the writing of the speech. I came home that afternoon upset and depressed. However, my father was eager to become involved. He said that I should write the speech, and then he would go over it and add his suggestions and maybe use more appropriate words. My dad was not only in the Air Force, but after World War II he became an attorney in the Air Force. Attorneys sometimes love this kind of stuff.

  I discovered that I was a fair speech writer on my own. But when my father got done with my speech, either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton might have used it with positive effect. I practised the speech to a point where I could pronounce the more unfamiliar words he had added, many of the definitions of which I had only just learned. Came the big day of the election, I delivered the entire speech without missing a beat. The students, and even the teacher was speechless. There was no laughter. When the votes were counted, I had the second highest number, and was therefore elected to the vice president post. The attitude of other students towards me changed. Now when I entered a room, someone would shout, “Here comes, Cohen. Get your dictionary.” But it was said in a friendly, respectful way. Their attitudes not only affected my ability to speak, but my general demeanor and self-confidence improved, and no doubt this assisted in my development and whatever success I attained later in life.

  START WITH SMALL SUCCESSES AND WORK UP

  All anyone needs to do is select a relatively easy goal to accomplish and then go ahead and accomplish it. Every time you complete a task or goal successfully, celebrate and congratulate yourself. Then set a higher goal or a more challenging task. It’s just like working out with weights or running. You build up the amount of weight slowly or run more swiftly as you develop your strength. Before long, you’ll be doing things that you never thought you could. Motivational speaker Zig Ziglar once described how he lost weight by jogging. Every day he counted and increased the number of mailboxes he passed as he jogged by. Do this in your own life and you will acquire that self-confidence you need to expect positive results and reach the top in your profession.

  YOU MUST DEVELOP YOUR OVERALL SELF-CONFIDENCE FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION

  As I mentioned in Chapter 1, Drucker wrote that your organization is not going to do better than you do yourself. Don’t expect it to be any more self-confident than you are either.

  Several years ago, I was surprised to read research that showed that most senior executives were more worried about speaking in public than they were of dying! Can you imagine that? Why was it true? What this means for many of us, even those having the ability to be extremely successful in some areas, is that we still lack overall self-confidence needed to reach the top. In many areas, we are afraid to expect positive results, because we have failed in these areas one or more times in the past. Now the question is, what can we do about this?

  SELF-CONFIDENCE IN ONE AREA CAN CARRY OVER INTO OTHERS

  The military uses something called a confidence course to build self- confidence. It consists of man-made obstacles sometimes coupled with other mental challenges that each participant must overcome successfully before passing on to the next obstacle. All of them are designed to be from moderately to severely difficult and challenging, but doable if done right and provide the personnel with confidence to continue to the next challenge. One might require climbing down a 100-foot rope suspended from a cliff. Another might force the participant to jump out to catch a swinging rope suspended over a pool of water. Do it right, and you catch the rope and safely reach the other side by dropping off before the rope starts swinging back. Do it incorrectly and you end up in the water. Another is called a ‘slide for life’. It consists of a rope drawn across a lake from a 90-foot tower on one side of the lake, to the bank of the lake on the other. The participant jumps off the tower holding on to a pulley attached to the rope. As he slides across the lake to the other side, he keeps his eyes on a visible individual signalling with a set of flags. On one signal, you raise your legs so that they are parallel with the water and you are in a sitting position. At the next signal, you let go of your perch and drop about 10 feet above the water. Like a stone, you go skipping across the lake to the bank of the opposite shore. If you don’t let go and drop off the pulley, you impact the bank of the lake with some force, and you can get injured. Better to drop off as you were instructed.

  While there is a real need for parachute training for some types of military duties, parachute training is frequently encouraged and given to almost anyone who applies for it for the same reason: confidence building, even if they are not assigned to paratroops. I knew a sales executive who got most of his sales force to do a parachute jump when sales were lagging for the same reason.

  Motivational speaker Tony Robbins encourages fire walks using the same reasoning. Yes, this is no misprint, I mean walking on a bed of white-hot coals for 12 feet or longer. Robbins calls this seminar ‘Fear into Power’, and makes it quite clear that he isn’t teaching party skills, but rather using the fire walk as a metaphor, “If you can do this which you think is impossible, what else can you do that you may also think is difficult or at least unpleasant.”

  What I am saying here is that there is a variety of confidence-building means available, some commercially, and they will work to raise your overall self-confidence.

  PHYSICAL FITNESS AS A CONFIDENCE BUILDER

  George Patton once said, “Fear makes cowards of us all.” He was right. When we are fatigued, our resistance is down. We make poorer decisions. We are more fearful. We cannot handle stress as well. We don’t feel as well and are much less likely to expect positive results. Therefore, all the military services emphasize physical fitness for everyone, whether your job is that of an office clerk, a Navy Seal, or an Army Ranger. If you are sitting in a missile silo, responsible for the launch of a nuclear-tipped missile, your most physically demanding task may be pressing a button. Under these circumstances, the physical demands may not justify spending a great deal of time, energy, and resources on physical fitness. But those who serve in such a capacity know that there is far more to it than that and that physical fitness is crucial to the mental performance and handling the responsibility that goes along with ‘just pressing a button’.

  If you are physically fit, you look better, feel better, and have more self-confidence. Some years ago, I watched a TV show based on a fictional story of young men trying to get through Harvard law school. In one sequence, there was to be a debate between two teams of two students. One team consisted of the two top men in the law class. The other team was made up of a self-confident West Point-trained army officer and a smart, but fearful and slovenly introvert.

  The West Pointer expected to win. He expected positive results. His partner, though a smart student, kept focusing on why they couldn’t win. Finally, the West Pointer realized he had to build up his partner’s self-confidence before he did anything else. So, he put his partner on a regime of physical fitness – push-ups, sit-ups, squat jump. His partner was subjected to a heavy dose. The brilliant introvert said, “We don’t have time for this. We’ve got to prepare our arguments and legal briefs. What has this got to do with winning the debate?”

  “Everything!” his ex-army partner told him. After several weeks, the introvert got fit, got self-confident, and together they won the debate. I do
n’t know who wrote the play, but he was right on the money. So, if you want to develop your self-confidence, I recommend that you consider working out. I’m told that Peter Drucker did this until he was well into his nineties. I know that Doris Drucker, his wife was working out and playing tennis at the same time.

  Start slowly at first. Jog from one mailbox to the next like Zig Ziglar. Then, every day add another mailbox. Or you can start working with weights. Do the same thing and work up slowly to heaver and heaver weights.

  Drucker believed strongly in measuring everything. He recommended writing down your intended results and then looking at actual results some time later as you progressed to see what you achieved. This lets you see your strengths and weaknesses in bold print, too. But your progress is encouraging and builds your self-confidence.

  TURN DISADVANTAGES INTO ADVANTAGES

  If you really want to build your self-confidence, start turning disadvantages into advantages. When you know you can do that, you know that you can do anything. Back in the early part of this century, the richest man of his day, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, commissioned a young reporter by the name of Napoleon Hill to research success. Carnegie offered to provide introductions to some of the richest and most famous men in America if Hill would investigate and analyse what had made them successful. It took Hill 20 years, but he accomplished his mission. One of his discoveries was that hidden within every problem, drawback, disadvantage, or obstacle, there was an equally powerful opportunity or advantage. Hill found that successful people looked for these opportunities hidden within the problems and used them. They always seemed to expect positive results. Later, Hill himself wrote the multimillion copy bestselling book, Think and Grow Rich which is still read by thousands every year.

  Entrepreneur Joe Cossman bought 10,000 pieces of costume jewellery in a closing-down sale. Each piece consisted of a bracelet with seven imitation gemstones. Unfortunately, no one wanted to buy them. Always interested in innovative ideas, Cossman took a course in hypnosis from a stage hypnotist. He heard the instructor say, “To induce a subject to enter a hypnotic trance, you need a point of fixation. This can be anything on which the subject can focus all of his attention.”

  “How about an imitation gemstone?” asked Cossman. “Sure,” answered the instructor. “Suddenly,” Cossman said, “I realized I had 10,000 points of fixation.” Cossman made a deal with the hypnotist to record a hypnotic induction and other information on a record, together with some printed instructions and using a free ‘hypnotic gem’ as inducement to buy. Cossman sold tens of thousands of units and made more than a million dollars by turning a disadvantage into an advantage. As a young student in 1957, I was one of Joe’s customers.

  These were accidents, but they needn’t be. Once you realize that no matter how difficult a problem, there are always solutions that can have a greater benefit to you hidden right within the problem. Moreover, the fact that you know that they are there (and they always are) will greatly increase your self-confidence in any situation.

  ONCE YOU DEVELOP YOUR SELF-CONFIDENCE, YOU CAN SET BIG GOALS

  People don’t put everything on the line for unimportant, insignificant goals – at least, not if they can help it. People in organizations of all types are the same. They do not want to work hard and sacrifice for trivial things, only for big, important things. The sky is the limit on how big and how important. Successful leaders have powerful visions and goals because their visions are big, usually tough to reach, and always important. Then, there is little that their organizations cannot accomplish because you and they expect very positive results.

  This concept can be used in sales too. Recently the Nightingale Corporation used this in promoting a product:

  “Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey. Low Wages, Long Hours…...”

  This referred to another ad placed in the early 1900s by explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton as he was looking for men to help him on a journey to find the South Pole. The ad drew more than five thousand candidates from which he selected the small crew he needed. On 15 December 1911 after much hardship (he spoke the truth in the ad) he accomplished this with the crew he had recruited.

  The Royal Air Force has a motto that goes something like this: “What man can conceive, man can achieve.” Note that this motto doesn’t say “up to a certain amount” or “to a certain point”. If you can conceive of it, you can achieve it. Period.

  George Washington is known as ‘the father of his country’ because he had the self-confidence to go against the British, the superpower of the day. He conceived of an entirely new nation with freedom and liberty. He held this vision through the most trying times. Had he failed against the tremendous odds he faced, he would have been hanged. In fact, although the Continental Congress appointed him Commander-in-Chief in June of 1775, he was commander of only one soldier: himself. There was no Continental army. If Congress changed its mood and decided to accommodate George III, King of England, Washington would be left holding the bag as the most visible and conspicuous of traitors to the Crown. But it was Washington’s self-confidence that enabled him to persevere through six years of war, and through incredible hardship, to ultimate victory. Washington’s example continues to inspire not only Americans, but also others in the world, today.

  If you want to become successful as a manager, or a professional like Drucker in any field, building your self-confidence is a good place to start. Remember, you cannot build on weakness, only strength – and strength of any kind starts with self-confidence.

  CHAPTER 14

  SETTING AND REACHING GOALS: PLANNING AND STRATEGY

  Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.

  – Peter F. Drucker

  Peter Drucker was very much into setting and achieving goals and objectives. It is little wonder that he originated the term “management by objectives” or MBO and first popularized it in his book The Practice of Management in 1954. Some say the basic idea goes back to Mary Parker Follett in her 1926 essay, “The Giving of Orders”1 and others who had thoughts about similar systems, but it seems clear that it was Drucker that put it all together as a better system of managing and measuring an employee’s performance by setting specific goals for the employee to attain. Drucker walked his talk in reaching and setting goals in his personal life.

  THE RISE OF MBO

  MBO (or goals) was adopted by many large corporations but was vigorously attacked by critics who pointed out that during the period of performance, many situations changed such that priorities were altered to the extent that any goals or objectives might have a much lower priority and might even make no sense at all. Drucker’s defence was that MBO was not a “set and forget system”, and that objectives had to be reviewed and adjusted continually, otherwise the correct objectives were unknown to the individual who was supposed to have the responsibility for attaining them and the supervisor who initially formulated them.

  GOALS MUST BE UNDER CONTINUAL REVIEW

  The first element we need to understand about goals is that they need to be reviewed periodically. Sometimes it is not the goal that needs to be changed, but the strategy we are using to attain that goal. In other situations, something has changed in our environment or in our lives such that the goal needs to be abandoned or seriously adjusted, and a new one substituted, just as Drucker abandoned his goal of a professorship at the University of Cologne due to the rise of Hitler. What this means is that before abandoning or otherwise changing a goal, you should first see if it is your strategy that should be adjusted and that your goal should remain essentially the same.

  YOU CAN’T GET THERE UNTIL YOU KNOW WHERE ‘THERE’ IS

  Which brings us to the important point of fully defining each one of your goals because you certainly can’t reach a goal if you don’t know exactly what it is. So, it’s important to fully define every goal. The definition should set out the goal with as many descriptors as needed and should incl
ude the times when each goal is to be attained. If you don’t have a goal defined fully, this will certainly lead to less than optimal results with any progress towards goal achievement including MBO.

  EXAMINING AVAILABLE RESOURCES

  You also need to examine each goal and determine what resources are needed to attain it. It makes no difference if you don’t have a resource so long as you can get it within a time that works for the time set for goal attainment. Drucker got a PhD in international law from the University of Frankfurt because he needed a PhD in any field, and the law degree was the easiest and quickest type of PhD to obtain for achievement of Drucker’s overall goal. Your goal may be different and your immediate objective, if a PhD, might be one of the most difficult to get.

  OBSTACLES MUST BE IDENTIFIED BEFORE THEY ARE REACHED

  When defining your goals, you must also consider obstacles to their achievement. The earlier in the process you can do this, the better. Drucker’s original goal was a professorship at the University of Cologne. But with the rise of Hitler, Drucker’s ethnic Jewish background would have stopped him. Drucker fully understood the risks this entailed in Nazi Germany. This was an obstacle he decided was best overcome by emigrating first to England and to get even further away, to the US, thus adjusting his goal at every step. In retrospect, this was clearly the correct decision although it delayed his attainment of his ultimate goal of a professorship at a major university. This also illustrates that we need to be wary of assumptions about obstacles and should analyse them completely and realistically at every step to avoid wishful thinking.