One of the most profound things Peter Drucker said in his little book, The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Nonprofit Organization, was:
Planning is not an event. It is the continuous process of strengthening what works and abandoning what does not, of making risk-taking decisions with the greatest knowledge of their potential effect, of setting objectives, appraising performance and results through systematic feedback, and making ongoing adjustments as conditions change.
Five Questions, originally published in the 1990s, has been republished in a new edition...a joint project of Drucker's Leader to Leader Institute and Jossey-Bass. To reflect its universality, the "nonprofit" in the first edition has been dropped so that the new title reads The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization.
As in the original, the book is organized around basic questions:
- What is our mission?
- Who is our customer?
- What does the customer value?
- What are our results?
- What is our plan?
The simplest ideas are always the most profound, a tenet we should all keep in mind in a confusing period of politics, a jangled economy and a multitude of "experts."
Drucker's self-assessment model is so flexible that it can be used anywhere, from the corporate boardroom to the smallest of nonprofits.
In this new edition of Drucker's classic, we have an enduring model updated with the perspectives of writers ranging from Philip Kotler to Judith Rodin. Each question, which is a chapter, leads off with a an excerpt from Peter Drucker's work, followed by commentary from the new contributors.
This approach makes for a powerful read that sticks to Drucker's original style of getting to the heart of things quickly and directly. Frances Hesselbein provides an eloquent introduction that ties the older work to the new one.
To provide a flavor of this fine book, I've summarized some of Question Two: Who is Our Customer?
Drucker adds three sub questions:
- Who is our primary customer?
- Who are our supporting customers?
- How will our customers change?
Drucker could remember when nonprofits resisted calling their stakeholders customers. That was a business term. Nonprofits had clients, patients, audience members, students. To ease organizations over this hurdle, Drucker would ask "Who must be satisfied for the organization to achieve results?"
Drucker maintained that in social sector organizations there was the primary customer whose life was changed through the organization's work; and there were supporting customers such as volunteers, members, partners, funders, employees and others who must be satisfied as well.
Satisfying your primary customers would not be enough, although Drucker warned about confusing the two. They are different, and the organization's mission must focus on the primary recipient of its services. But that mission will never be achieved without supporters who might be a donor but also might be a key gatekeeper in a community where you deliver your services.
Drucker said that customers are never static. The numbers will change, the groups will become more diverse. Their needs and aspirations will evolve. There may be individuals who need your service but not in the way you deliver it today. There are customers that you should stop serving because you are not achieving results.
Being able to adjust to new information about customers is crucial. Asking "who is our customer" over and over and then adapting to the changing answers is the way to create results.
Philip Kotler updates Drucker's insights by pointing out that "The best companies don't create customers. They create fans." Furthermore, we have found that even truckloads of information about customers is not enough if it doesn't capture the quality of the customer experience. This is as true of a nonprofit as it is of a company.
The message of Drucker's updated book is this: Get back to basics but don't forget to update your paradigm to reflect today's realities. You can do both with The Five Most Important Questions.
