"Wise management limits itself to the sphere of direct relevance to its central task."
It seems to me that business is under assault today more than at any other time. Not only from those that hate free markets and entrepreneurship, but even more so from those that think they know what's best for the world.
Even some of the largest corporations are coming under increasing pressure to back and support all sorts of causes that each source convinces them is the issue of our time. And they've been shamed and blackmailed into responding.
When I say blackmailed, I'm not talking in the legal sense of being forced to pay money for something, but rather, from the unspoken hint that the press they'll receive if they don't will come back to haunt them. And many of these activists groups are more than willing to follow through on their threats.
Like Drucker says though, wise management needs to resist this pressure. There is a central purpose and task at hand that every business should have. It's there that the tremendous focus needs to be.
When it comes down to it, business does the greatest thing for the world when it does what it does best: provide great products and services to its customers. When a business does that, it then will provide jobs that take care of the majority of problems that exist.
To take the focus off or task is a huge mistake in my estimation, and I think businesses will start to feel the impact of this in the not-too-distant future.
We need to be extremely cautious of what is called "activism." Some of it has some legitimate concerns, a lot of it is built upon hype and fear in order to draw money to their causes.
Even in the best of cases, it's still a distraction from what we as businesses and businesses leaders contribute most to the world.
Should we not give? That's not the point. The point is to not get distracted by those trying to save the world. I've watched in the last several years as this hype has grown and grown, and businesses falling all over themselves to align themselves with what they're convinced of are crucial causes, start to take their eye off of their purpose for being. They've suffered tremendously as a result.
If the nations and people of the world would concentrate on encouraging entrepreneurial environments, the majority of the problems would be taken care of. Good businesses and jobs are the result of entrepreneurial activity. It is there that most answers will be found, not in the continual feeding of activists organizations that can only provide temporary solutions.
We need to stay focused on what we're good at, and guard ourselves against the continual barrage of causes that are proliferating beyond the ability to even keep up with. If we take care of our business and central task, we'll find that it will be the greatest thing we can do for the world.
Other Peter Drucker Resources:
The Man Who Invented Management
Beyond the Information Revolution
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