Drucker Questions for the Economy

Who is your customer?

Key question to ask.

What do they want?

Jobs.

What can you provide them of value?

The question is how can you provide them with jobs.

How do you measure success?

Creation of jobs.

A great column from Thomas Friedman that got me thinking about this. Really Unusually Uncertain.

And I am sure Peter Drucker would have suggested, always test before doing on a large scale. I remember this comment from a conversation with a candidate for California Governor that Peter Drucker.

Something I have learned, is do lots of small projects, for there will be a lot of failures, but the ones that succeed will have a huge benefit.

My worry is the so called jobs bills have not created jobs that have the potential to have a huge payoff in creating more jobs. A few bets on a larger scale in one area, green energy, make work shovel ready jobs (sidewalks to no where - my area got some nice road dividers), but not for creating lots of different businesses. The challenge of a new business is knowing which one would succeed. Which business is going to be the next Google, Facebook, Netscape, etc. And which ones are going to be miserable failures. And which ones just limp along.