This year, management guru Peter Drucker would have turned 100, a period coincident with the rise of management as a science. Harvard Business Review, whose content I love, dedicated its November issue to a fresh look at Drucker’s wisdom. Buy it.
But while you are ordering the magazine, let me throw in a quote, in this case from A.G Lafley, who until this year ran Procter & Gamble (he remains its chairman):
“I learned many things from Peter over the years, but far and away were the simplest: “The purpose of a company is to create a customer” and “A business … is defined by the want the customer satisfies when he or she buys a product or service. To satisfy a customer is the mission and purpose of every business.”
So, when you next read Booksquare, or Dear Author, think of Peter Drucker. We can defend the trade model, but we’re supposed to focus on the customer, who is a reader. Of books. And not always in printed form.
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