Consulting Drucker

by William Cohen

  In the other joke, the consultant strikes back and is the protagonist. A client has a problem within his organization, but doesn’t know what or where it is. He hires a consultant and sends him to an empty desk, along with the company’s organization charts. A few minutes later, the consultant rises from the desk. He shows the client one of the organization charts and with a black marker pen he draws an “X” prominently over one job position and gives the client instructions to eliminate that particular job. At the same time he presents his client with a written invoice for $1,000.

  The client is shocked. “You spent less than five minutes looking at our organization charts, then you bring them to me and draw a single “X” on one of them and charge us $1,000. Give me a price breakdown,” he demands.

  The consultant scribbles a few lines on a piece of paper and hands it to the client. It reads:

  Drawing an “X” on a specific job position on the company’s organization chart $1.00

  Knowing where to draw that “X” $999.00

  Total

  $1,000.00

  The point with both of these little homilies is that they both assume the engagement model of consulting to be that the consultant and his expertise solve the issue and that the client is basically a bystander to this process. Neither situation described Drucker’s model of the consulting engagement. The model they describe is that a client tells the consultant his problem either verbally or most likely in writing, and then gives the consultant a statement of the work to be accomplished. The consultant then independently solves the client’s problem, be it by simply observing and reporting on the time shown on a client’s watch, or inspection and analysis of something else.

  The Client Is the Real Expert

  I was once asked to sit in on a team of four consultants who were making a presentation on strategy for a major university that had hired them. They had used a variation of the GE/McKinsey nine-cell matrix to allocate resources over various departments and programmes. They were clearly experienced. They had collected data, analysed it, placed it into various cells in the matrix, and drew conclusions from an analysis they explained based on their interpretation of the data, including what resources were needed and how to allocate these resources.

  Certainly a credible job, and I had no quarrel with the basic process that they used, although I did find fault with their interpretation of the data on which their analysis, conclusions, and recommendations were based. And this leads to one of the advantages of Drucker’s model of the consulting process: it wasn’t the consultant who provided the data or interpreted it. It was the client. It was the client who best knew and understood the situation, and after Drucker provided the guidance through questions, the client provided the correct data, as well. The client did this because Drucker asked questions that provoked the client’s brain to start working. These questions acted as a catalyst, resulting in a much better analysis and solution from someone who better understood the facts and nuances of the situation than any one or more consultants could on their own as outsiders, no matter how brilliant or hardworking. It was simply a matter of asking the right questions of the brain. However, there is something else that made Drucker’s questions even more powerful. We need first look at using our own brains to get answers.

  Asking Your Own Brain Questions

  Years ago I read an article in which the author recommended that talking to oneself was really quite useful in problem solving. The author maintained that if you talked to yourself and asked your brain questions as a separate entity, you would frequently be rewarded with effective answers. In fact, your brain would answer, or at least attempt to answer, any question you decided to ask.

  I tried this technique and was surprised at just how easily it worked and how frequently it provided me with sometimes immediate and highly effective answers to a variety of questions with which all of us are faced on a daily basis.

  Now you might think that you are doing this anyway as you worry about and obsess over some issue bothering you at a given time. But that’s not what I’m recommending with this technique. What I’m suggesting is actually conversing with your brain to arrive at an answer. For example, instead of concentrating hard on whether you should adopt course of action A or course of action B, you merely say to yourself, “Hey, brain – what should I do, adopt course of action A or course of action B?” Amazingly, you will frequently find that your brain will many times reply with a very workable answer that is usually the best course of action to adopt.

  Why This Strange Technique Works

  Psychologists tell us that one reason for this phenomenon is that the brain already has all the facts necessary for problem resolution stored away in memory. Some of these facts cannot be easily accessed directly. By eliminating the various psychological blocks when you struggle with finding a solution directly, questioning the brain as a separate entity eliminates much of the garbage that is preventing you from deciphering an answer.

  However, sometimes the pressures and stresses we are under are too great. The problem is either too big or the situation is too demanding. Our brain cannot function consciously so easily and will not consciously come up with a workable solution, even if we question it separately. But the brain can work subconsciously, even while the conscious brain tends to blot out the useful information emanating from the sub-consciousness. The solution then, is how we can separate the two. Fortunately there are number of non-invasive techniques available without resorting to a surgeon’s knife to separate the conscious mind from the unconscious mind, which wouldn’t work anyway.

  The answer is distraction. This may be done in a variety of ways. It is said that the inventor Thomas Edison used the simple technique of sitting in a darkened room. Others take a nap or simply go to sleep at night and find they awaken in the morning with the solution. I’ve had this happen to me without any effort, and maybe you have too.

  The Power of Distraction in Problem Solving

  Scientists at Carnegie Mellon, led by Dr John David Creswell, found that all these techniques simply distracted the conscious brain, frequently even for just a short period, while allowing the subconscious mind to do its job and continue to work.6 They investigated the brains of individuals attempting to solve problems that their conscious minds couldn’t handle. Using the purchasing of an imaginary car, along with conflicting and multiple wants and needs, the subjects were divided into three groups. The first group was required to come to an immediate decision and consequently could do little about weighing the pros and cons in coming to an optimal decision. The second group was given time to try to consciously try to solve the problem to decide on the optimal car. The third group was given the same problem, but also a distracter task to perform. While it held their attention and distracted their conscious effort, their subconscious minds continued working on the car problem. The distracted group performed significantly better than the other groups at selecting the optimum car while considering other factors in the purchase situation. This group was distracted for only a few minutes, but clearly this method was more effective than even sleeping for many hours.

  I have found similar results in playing games online. For example, Mahjong, is a game in which a variety of stacked tiles are displayed and the player is required to consecutively eliminate successive tiles that are similar while competing against time. Frequently stuck in attempting to identify similar tiles, by mere looking away and thinking of something else for a few seconds, I could look back and immediately identify duplicate tiles, which I had been struggling with and could not discover earlier. David Rock, analysing Creswell’s research for Psychology, confirmed similar results in his own game-playing research.7

  What can we learn from this about Drucker’s consulting methodology? We know that asking questions, even asking questions of ourselves, can serve as a distraction to enable higher quality, and even more immediate answers to problems confronting us, consulting or otherwise. Now we can begin to see the value of Drucker’s que
stions as a methodology for consulting engagements and that by simply asking questions, Drucker was frequently even more powerful than the largest consulting firms that supplied clients with solutions.

  Drucker’s Five Basic Questions

  We’ve talked about the power of Drucker’s questions and his questioning previously, beginning in chapter one. What better recommendation could Drucker’s questions and his questioning have had than the recommendations of Jack Welch? Remember, we’re talking about the most widely respected executive of our lifetimes, a man who caused the value of a major corporation to rise 4,000% during his tenure, and when he retired was given $417 million, the largest severance pay in history, and finally a man who credits Drucker and his consulting with a significant contribution to his accomplishments.8 That’s one heck of a recommendation.

  Drucker’s basic questions were even brought together in a single book,9 edited by Frances Hesselbein, winner of the of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President H. Bush, first occupant of West Point’s Leadership Chair, once CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA, and currently one of my presidential advisors at the California Institute of Advanced Management. Drucker said of Frances that she could serve successfully as CEO of any corporation in America.

  These are the five vital questions of Drucker’s, which Frances called “The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask about Your Organization”:

  1. What is our mission?

  2. Who is our customer?

  3. What does the customer value?

  4. What are our results?

  5. What is our plan?

  As Drucker maintained, each of these is one of the five most important questions you will ever ask, and these are the most important questions you will ever ask of your clients, as well. So we had better understand exactly what Drucker was talking about.

  What Is the Mission of Your Client?

  Drucker advised his clients to decide what business they were in, which clearly involved knowing the organization’s mission. Drucker’s favourite mission statement was from a very old business. But this mission statement, though not recent and very short, almost a one-liner, was his favourite for a very important reason: it changed Sears Roebuck from a struggling mail-order house that continually flirted with bankruptcy into the world’s leading retailer, all within 10 years. Simply stated, it was to be the informed and responsible buyer first for the American farmer, and later for the American family.10 Like all missions, an organization’s mission may change. Do I walk my talk? Does my own former organization, the California Institute of Advanced Management (CIAM), have an identified mission? You bet it does!

  “The mission of CIAM is to provide a flexible, affordable, and high quality education based on the principles and values of Peter F. Drucker, the “Father of Modern Management,” and to enable students to immediately apply their knowledge and ability with integrity and success.”

  Who Are Your Client’s Customers?

  As I noted in an earlier chapter, my friend, entrepreneur Joe Cossman, started selling garden sprinklers that consisted of a flexible plastic hose with holes in it. He sold mainly through supermarkets and similar outlets. One day he read that his hose was being used in the poultry business as an inexpensive way to cool poultry pens during the hot summer months. This caused him to redefine his business and opened an entirely new market for his product. Clients need to continually track sales to redefine customers.

  Marlboro is the largest selling brand of cigarettes in the world. It gained millions with its image of the masculine man’s cigarette, promoted by “The Marlboro Man” using manly representatives including weight lifters, sea captains, and cowboys. You probably would never have guessed it, but Marlboro was launched as a woman’s cigarette with the slogan, “Mild as May” in 1924. It even had a red-tipped filter to hide lipstick stains. However, later the idea of a filter itself pointed to the possibility of a shift to a wider market of men – a market that was concerned about the risk of lung cancer, which the proper filter, not necessarily red, might reduce. Results were immediate once this market had been identified. It went from 1% to the number-four ranking brand.11 Drucker clearly knew his stuff. Knowing your customers is clearly more than half the battle.

  What Does Your Client’s Customer Value?

  What the customer values is frequently not what we think. Some years ago, Falstaff beer, once a major brewing corporation in St Louis and a popular beer in the US East Coast, attempted to expand into the lucrative California market. Early attempts failed, although blind taste tests confirmed that the brand was exactly what the Californians wanted. Some in the company wanted to change the product, which they said was clearly wrong for the California market. But shrewder marketers in the company determined that the error was not in the product, but in the perception of the product and Falstaff advertising, which did not properly promote the qualities of beer desired by the customer in the Californian market.

  Of course, in the mid-1980s Coca-Cola made a similar and even bigger mistake on a national level when it attempted to introduce “New Coke” in response to “The Pepsi Challenge”, which was slowly eroding Coke’s market. Coke introduced “New Coke” as a revolutionary soft drink to considerable fanfare. You could almost hear Coke marketers shouting, “So you guys at Pepsi want a challenge do you? We’ll give you a challenge!” Coca-Cola had carefully conducted blind taste tests and formulated a product that was consistently preferred over either its own original product or that of its rival, Pepsi Cola.

  The problem was that taste was not the only reason customers bought Coke and not necessarily what Coke’s customers valued. Above all, they valued Coke’s image. It represented America, as much an icon as mom, apple pie, and John Wayne. With this market, Coca-Cola’s previous campaign of the “The Real Thing” resonated. However, America rebelled in mass against “New Coke”, which appeared not to be “The Real Thing.” After millions of dollars in development, testing, advertising, promotion, and taking on detractors nose-to-nose in the media, eventually Coke surrendered. At first, old Coke returned and was billed as “Classic Coke”. Eventually “New Coke” was quietly withdrawn from the market.

  The strange thing was that even blind taste tests proved that Americans really did like the taste of “New Coke”, although most blind testers really can’t tell the difference between specific brands. In one famous blind taste test conducted before several million viewers on television, one of the leaders of the rebellion and campaign against New Coke identified Pepsi Cola as his one and only “old Coke”.

  What Results Are Your Client Getting?

  Drucker knew that, without measuring results, you were not going to make any progress. In fact, you couldn’t tell if your client was succeeding or failing, and if progress was being made or not. So by results, Drucker wanted numbers: “Show me the money!” doesn’t just mean cash. It means results. This was an important exception to his recommendation to place numbers behind a decision maker’s gut instinct.

  What Is Your Client’s Plan?

  You will probably be surprised how frequently your client will have no plan at all, or it will be woefully inadequate. Drucker was equally surprised. However, as with everything, Drucker had questions he felt important to ask before a client sat down to work out the plan. Drucker wrote that a leader must start with three questions to begin planning to create an organization’s future. The first was his familiar, “What business are you in?” You have that one pretty much covered if you used the mission question. But he had two more questions to be considered, especially if the plan was more strategic than tactical: “What will the business be in the future?” That is, will the business and the mission change? However, Drucker went further. He wanted to know, right then, if the client thought the business or mission should change. Drucker wanted to know, “What should it be for the future?”12

  Although these questions need to be considered separately, they need to be integrated, too. This is because the present is conn
ected with the future. We have short-range plans for projects, products, and initiatives. These have an impact on what our businesses will be in the short-term future, whether we like it or not. What should it be is a question of the more distant future. How far distant? That’s up to you and your client. Ten years is not too far distant. I’ve seen organizations plan for the creation of a future 25 or even 50 years away. Regardless of the time horizon selected, the answers to the three questions must fit together. One doesn’t suddenly jump from the business we are in today without intermediate steps into the future of what our business should be.

  How to Develop Good Questions

  Although it is Drucker’s “The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask about Your Organization” that have received the most publicity, Drucker asked many questions of his clients, and they are scattered throughout his writings. Clearly this methodology was an important part of his consulting, and it can benefit the consulting that any individual or consulting organization does or any leader uses in looking to better his or her own organization, even if combined with more traditional methods. However, while Drucker’s questions were always effective, they did not cover everything or anything in every possible consulting engagement. Drucker himself would have said, “I am not a guru, able to provide every possible question under the sun that might be useful or needed.” As a consultant, what questions do you think should be asked? Here are some guidelines for developing questions, which I think Drucker would have approved: