What is done, and how is largely determined by what outsiders want and need. It is largely determined by "discipline" ... of the marketplace.
When Drucker said "discipline" ... of the marketplace above, he meant that the marketplace disciplines us to perform how they want us to, not how we want to perform.
A business will only exist and survive as long as it serves something outside itself. If it serves itself, it will die a slow death, if it gets started successfully at all.
We've seen a lot of demagogues in our day try to turn this around. The idea of all these things that are created to passify and allegedly retain great employees is in many cases a farce. There will be no employees or business if we don't exist to serve the market we've been created for.
Our customers, whether businesses or consumers, want one thing, and that's to receive the promise of what our business exists for. The rest, in the end, is irrelevant to them. That's the beginning and end of why they do business with us.
Now with that in mind, there can be other things that create good will and make people think of the business in a certain way. But if we don't have our purpose straightened out and execute what we promise, the business will fall by the wayside and we'll wonder what happened.
It's not what we want, it's what our customers want that matter. Those obsessed with self-need and wants, rather than serving others, will find themselves struggling to grow or survive.
The vast majority of our attention must be on our market alone. Those who do this best will win, as numerous people and organizations attempt to shame businesses into taking focus off what really matters and they're good at, to things they're not equipped for.
We must stay focused on why our business exists and what our market wants us to do for them. Anything else sends us down the wrong road, no matter how noble it may sound.
Other Peter Drucker Resources:
The Man Who Invented Management
Beyond the Information Revolution
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