Consulting Drucker

by William Cohen

  • Will the question act as a catalyst for further discussion with your client?

  • Will the question arouse curiosity?

  • Will the question promote an exploration of new ideas?

  • Will the question challenge the client to a suggestion?

  • Is the question open to a variety of different views and responses?

  • Will the question require clients to answer how and why?

  • Will the question help uncover controversies in the subject matter?

  • Is the question directly connected with the client’s operation?

  • Will the question encourage clients to examine their own thinking?

  When your list of questions is complete, go over them and ensure that they are asked in your client’s language. You may need to have someone from that industry, or even that organization, review and recommend new wording, additional questions, or certain questions that should be eliminated. Sometimes your wording may offend clients in a particular organization, so this review and your own modification are well worthwhile. A review by someone in a client’s organization once saved me from a tremendous political blunder due to a situation with a former CEO that I did not know about.

  Drucker’s engagement model, relying on questions, may be very different from the kind of consulting that you may wish to do. But his techniques were sound. They frequently yielded amazing results, and they are easily adapted and can be integrated into a variety of other consulting engagement models.

  1 No author listed, “McKinsey & Company,” Wikipedia, accessed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinsey_%26_Company, 13 June 2015.

  2 No author listed. “BCG History,” Official BCG Website, accessed at http://www.bcg.com/about_bcg/vision/our_heritage/history/default.aspx, 13 June 2015.

  3 No author listed, “Boston Consulting Group,” Wikipedia, accessed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Consulting_Group, 13 June 2015.

  4 No author listed, “Worldwide Offices,” Bain & Company Website, accessed at http://bain.com/about/worldwide-offices/index.aspx, 13 June 2015.

  5 I do not remember the date of this lecture, except that it was at West Point in fall 1958 or spring 1959. It was particularly memorable for General Dornberger’s explanation of the dimensions of the V-2 rocket, but also for a question he answered as to which service should have responsibility for the new IRBMs (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles). The Army, Navy, and Air Force were all competing for this mission. Dornberger had been an army officer, in fact in the field artillery before being assigned duties in developing military rockets. West Point was an army academy, although it also supplied a number of Air Force officers, as did the Naval Academy, because the Air Force did not yet graduate its first class from its own academy. So it was no surprise when asked his opinion that Dornberger answered, “Well, it shouldn’t be the Navy because there are no oceans in space.” This evoked loud cheers from his audience. Then he continued, “But it should be the Army either, because there are no land masses either—this should clearly be an Air Force mission.” Those of us who wanted to be commissioned in the Air Force were the only ones to cheer.

  6 John David Creswell, Bursley, James K., Satpute, Ajay B., “Neural Reactivation Links Unconscious Thought To Decision-Making Performance,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access, May 29, 2013, accessed at http://www.psy.cmu.edu/people/Creswell,%20Bursley,%20&%20Satpute%20(2013),%20unconscious%20neural%20reactivation%20in%20decision%20making,%20SCAN.pdf, 16 June 2015.

  7 David Rock, “Your Brain at Work,” Psychology, September 18, 2012, accessed at https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-brain-work/201209/stop-trying-solve-problems, 16 June 2015

  8 No author listed, “Jack Welch,” Wikipedia, accessed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch, 16 June 2015.

  9 Peter F. Drucker, edited by Frances Hesselbein, The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask about Your Organization (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).

  10 Drucker, Peter F., Managing the Non-profit Organization (New York: HarperCollins, Publishers, 1990) p.4.

  11 No author listed. “Marlboro (cigarette),” Wikipedia, accessed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlboro_(cigarette), 17 June 2015.

  12 Drucker, Peter F., Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1973, 1974), p.122.

  Chapter 8

  Disregarding What Everyone “Knows” to Get to the Truth

  Drucker said and wrote so much that was wise, profound, valuable, and witty – he may have more quotes attributed to him than any other management thinker of modern times. I am frequently asked if Drucker said this or that, which could not be located as an original source even after a thorough internet search. Sometimes it sounds like something Drucker might say, but I could not recall him actually having said it or remember reading it among his writings or speeches. There is, however, one particular remark that I clearly remember him making again and again, both in the classroom and in private conversations. Yet, only after I wrote and explained this in several of my books about Drucker did it appear anywhere in print, and I have never seen it among his published work. This is what he said … often: “What everyone knows is usually wrong.” His continued use of this phrase clearly meant that he not only believed it strongly, but considered it important. I investigated its truth and discovered just how correct he was.

  Drucker Was Right Again

  Maybe through repetition I finally began to think more deeply about what his words really meant. This seemingly simple and self-contradicting statement is amazingly true and immensely valuable in every business and management decision and analysis. It is especially important in consulting because it opens a world of alternatives that we would normally disregard as unusable because “everyone knows something to be so”, even though it may not be. What Drucker wanted to emphasize was that we must always question all assumptions, no matter from where they originate or how impossible they may first appear. This is especially true regarding anything that a majority of people “know” or assume without analysis or further questioning. This “knowledge” should always be suspect and needs to be examined much more closely, because in a surprisingly high percentage of cases, the information “known to be true” will turn out to be false, inaccurate, or true only under certain conditions. This can lead a consultant to overlook some uniquely valuable alternatives and to extremely poor or even flat-out wrong recommendations. I now consider this simple statement critically important regarding his work and especially in consulting engagements.

  This was confirmed by my father, who, except for the war years of World War II, was a practising attorney and after the war switched from military intelligence to become a full-time military attorney. He said, “Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers. Believe only one-half of what you hear. And don’t believe everything you see, either.” Before the war he practised criminal law.

  What Everyone Knows Is Usually Wrong

  Of course there are many old “truisms” once thought by everyone to be true that we laugh at today. “The world is flat” or “the earth is the centre of the universe” are typical. Question some of these “certainties” in the past and you could be sent to prison or burned as a witch. The ancient Greeks knew that everything was made up of only four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. I don’t think that you got imprisoned or killed for believing otherwise, but you were at the very least thought ignorant.

  Of course, in modern times we learned that these views were mistaken. I often remind myself that when I took chemistry as a student in high school, I learned that a periodic table of elements had been formulated by the Russian chemist and inventor Mendeleev and that it established that there were exactly 93 elements, which were arranged by atomic mass, no more, no less. We got an “A” if we could name them all. Had we proposed that there could be more, I am certain that we would have been immediately corrected by our teachers. In the words of Richard Rodgers and O
scar Hammerstein in Oklahoma, things “had gone about as far as they could go”, Today, there are 102 elements – or so “everybody knows”. And what they forgot to tell us is that Mendeleev had only envisioned 63 elements… the other 30 hadn’t been discovered yet in his time.

  Many Things that Everyone “Knows” Today Are Also Wrong

  Just about everyone, both Christian and non-Christian, knows that the Immaculate Conception refers to the birth of Jesus, right? Maybe so, but what everybody knows is wrong again. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Immaculate Conception refers to the fact that “Mary was preserved, exempt from all stain of original sin at the first moment of her animation, and sanctifying grace was given to her before sin could have taken effect in her soul”.1

  Or I like this one. Consider the most famous sentence ever uttered by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. In fact, this may be the most famous sentence ever uttered by any fictional or even real detective. Everyone knows that this sentence consists of only the four words, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” According to what everyone knows, the famous detective would say these words to his sidekick and recorder of his adventures, Dr Watson, who showed surprise at a particularly shrewd, but totally unexpected deduction made by the sleuth. Maybe everyone knows this, but they are wrong.

  As pointed out by Paul F. Boller, Jr and John George in their book, They Never Said It (Oxford University Press, 1989), Holmes didn’t utter the immortal words in a single instance in anything ever written by Doyle, not in any of Doyle’s four published novels, nor in 56 short stories about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr John H. Watson. Wherever did people come up with such totally believed, but incorrect knowledge? If not Doyle’s literary character, who did utter these immortal words? In reality, it was the English actor, Basil Rathbone, playing the part of Sherlock Holmes in Hollywood movies that responded with the famous sentence, not Doyle’s character in anything he ever wrote. These words seemed to fit the character of Holmes perfectly in those days on the silver screen, and though not emanating from Doyle’s creation, it became a known fact. However, I have noticed that more recent Sherlock Holmes movies on the silver screen and television no longer have Sherlock continuing the practice. That’s a shame. They seem to be missing something for those who grew up in that era.

  The Ancients Knew that 100% Agreement Is Suspect

  Drucker’s assertion rings true across the millennia. In Ancient Israel, the highest court in the land was called the Sanhedrin. It corresponded roughly to the highest court in the land, although it had a lot more power than the US Supreme Court does today.

  The Sanhedrin judged the most important cases and had the power to exact capital punishment. However, in this high court, there were no prosecuting or defence attorneys. As far as we know, there were no appeals to the Sanhedrin’s judgment, either. The Sanhedrin court consisted only of judges. The national Grand Sanhedrin had 71 judges, but each ancient Hebrew city had a little Sanhedrin, consisting of 23 judges. The actual number is unimportant to some factual points.

  The judges could examine the defendant, the accusers, and any witnesses from either side brought before it. The Sanhedrin was the only court that had the power to try anyone, even the king. To exonerate a defendant required only a majority of one, while to find the defendant guilty required a majority of two.

  But here’s the most interesting rule of the Sanhedrin’s judgment: more than 2,000 years ago, the ancient Hebrews made Drucker’s most famous conclusion a rule of law. If all 71 judges found the accused guilty of a capital crime, he or she was allowed to go free! And these folks were supposed to be “wise”. How did they ever come up with a rule like that?

  Remember, there was no defence attorney to argue the defendant’s case. But the ancient Hebrew judges knew that there is always a defence to be argued for every individual accused, regardless of the gravity of the crime or the persuasiveness of the evidence and witnesses. So if not a single judge considered that the defendant’s case had merit, this was clear evidence to them that no matter how obvious the guilt, something was amiss in the situation and wrong in the court. Perhaps someone against the defendant was too charismatic or too persuasive. Maybe politics, corruption, “command influence” by the high priest or king, or something else was involved. In their opinion, this single fact meant that it was much more likely that the accused could actually be innocent and that this was so important that it outweighed everything else implying guilt. In other words, when every judge – men especially appointed due to respect for their experience and judgment – all knew something to be absolutely true, it probably wasn’t true at all, and the defendant walked. That’s pretty strong support for Drucker’s assertion!

  Today the impact of mass agreement on an issue has been addressed and confirmed in psychological research. In one experiment, subjects were asked to rate the attractiveness of individuals depicted in selections of photographs. However, there was only one real subject and the results were rigged. Unknown to the subjects, the other participants were part of the scientist’s team of experimenters. These participants were to agree about the most attractive individual depicted in any particular set of photographs at random. It was found that the subject could usually be influenced to agree with any photograph that the group selected, regardless of merit, simply by the overwhelming support from the others. This experiment demonstrates the influence of social proof. At the same time it confirms Drucker’s theory that when everyone is certain about a fact, the “fact” usually isn’t a fact at all, or that something usually factual isn’t factual in a specific instance.

  Drucker’s Wisdom Critical in Management and Therefore Consulting

  I like this story, because it is illustrates not only that whatever everyone knows is wrong, but is also a great story of personal integrity by a CEO representing a major corporation. It happened more than 30 years ago. Yet I remember the whole situation as if it were yesterday. It began the morning of 29 September 1982. A young girl, 12-year-old Mary Kellerman, died after taking a capsule of Extra-Strength Tylenol (a paracetamol-based brand drug). Others died soon afterward, all from the Chicago area. It was soon discovered that someone had laced a number of the popular over-the-counter drug with cyanide. This led to a nationwide panic. One hospital received 700 queries from people suspecting they had been poisoned with the tainted product. People in cities across the US were admitted to hospitals on suspicion of cyanide poisoning. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigated 270 incidents of suspected product tampering. While some of the product had been tampered with as some sort of a sick joke, in most cases this was pure hysteria with no basis at all in fact. This panic in itself demonstrates part of Peter’s thesis, but there is more that is of some importance to both consultants and management decision makers.

  At that time, the product was almost 30 years old. Over the years, Tylenol had built a well-deserved trust with consumers. This trust disappeared almost at once and sales of the product plummeted. Johnson & Johnson, the product’s owner, launched a recall of $100 million in product and stopped all sales. The company advertised and advised everyone not to buy or use the product until further notice. Johnson & Johnson and its chairman, James Burke, received kudos for integrity and doing the right thing. However, when Burke announced that Johnson & Johnson succeeded in developing tamper-proof packaging and was going to reintroduce the product under its original name, virtually everyone predicted the demise of the product.

  One well-known advertising guru was quoted in the New York Times: “I don’t think they can ever sell another product under that name … There may be an advertising person who thinks he can solve this and if they find him, I want to hire him, because then I want him to turn our water cooler into a wine cooler.”2

  The product once dominated the market. “Everyone knew” that those days were gone for good. An article in the Wall Street Journal commented sadly that the product was dead and could not be resurrected; any other notio
n was an executive’s pipedream. A survey of “the-man-in-the-street” found almost no one who would buy the product, regardless of what the company did to guarantee its safety or promote its sale. Virtually everyone predicted that this brand, which accounted for 17% of the company’s net income in 1981, would never recover. Guess again. Only two months later, the product was back, this time in tamper-proof packaging and supported by an extensive media campaign. A year later, its share of the $1.2 billion analgesic market, which had plunged to 7% from a 37% high, was back to 30% of the market despite “what everyone knew”.3

  The product we’re talking about, of course, is Tylenol, which eventually made a full recovery and more than 30 years later reached a high of 56% share of its market.4

  Where would Johnson & Johnson have been had this established brand, built through 30 years of advertising, performance, and reliability, been allowed to disappear under its old name? “New Tylenol” probably would have gone the way “New Coke” did. How much would it have cost Johnson & Johnson to attempt to introduce and build an entirely new brand to replace Tylenol? Could this even have been accomplished? We’ll never know. Nor do we know whether Peter Drucker was called in to consult with Johnson & Johnson. What we do know is that Johnson & Johnson did the right thing when this tragedy struck and then took the right actions to reintroduce the Tylenol product successfully. This was one of the first recalls of this type and it also introduced tamper-proof packaging for these types of products. Burke’s actions are still studied in the business schools as an almost perfect example of a successful public relations strategy and execution. However, the basis of this was that Johnson & Johnson executives, knowingly or not, decided that “what everyone knows is not necessarily right”, and as Drucker suggested, is usually wrong. Burke and his team went up against what all the experts and even consumers “knew” and went on to resurrect Tylenol to be even more successful than it was previously.