Saturday, July 25, 2009

Insights of Peter Drucker

Today's post is a direct quote from Peter Drucker.

Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it. It always creates new realities. It always creates, above all, its own and different problems. Only the fairy story ends, "They lived happily ever after."

It is not easy for the management of a successful company to ask, "What is our business?" Everybody in the company then thinks that the answer is so obvious as not to deserve discussion. It is never popular to argue with success, never popular to rock the boat.

The ancient Greeks knew that the penalty for the hubris of success is severe. The management that does not ask "What is our business?" when the company is successful is, in effect, smug, lazy, and arrogant. It will not be long before success will turn into failure."