Drucker Foundation News

March 1998 Volume 5 Issue 4

"The Discipline of Innovation"
by Peter F. Drucker

We live in a period of very rapid change. That also means that the opportunities for improving, for getting results, are changing very fast. Things that were not possible or were not needed yesterday suddenly become possible, and things that made a great deal of sense yesterday do not make sense.

We have to learn in our community organizations what is needed to perform. We know that we need a clear focus on mission. We need to define what results we are after, and to assess and stress what we're doing and how we're doing it constantly to make sure that we put our scarce resources of people and money where we get the most for them. Good intentions are no longer enough, we have to be result-focused and opportunity-focused. Perhaps this is best illustrated by an example...

For twelve years, I have been working very closely with a group of people in a major American city. They started out to provide mentoring for youngsters who were floundering in high school. After three or four years they had an oversupply of volunteers and no financial problems because their work makes sense to people. And yet, they had practically no results. It took us a few years to realize that by the time a child is in ninth or tenth grade, if that youngster hasn't learned how to learn, it's too late. They found out that the child that is behind grade level pretty badly by third or fourth grade is unlikely ever to catch up. So, about six years ago, they shifted their emphasis to grade school and kindergarten. When they began to focus on that age group, their results went up sky high. From almost no results with tenth graders, they achieved 60 percent results when they begin in second grade.

But gradually, we realized that we had one group where there were no results. We looked at them -- it's not a terribly large group, one out of six or seven of elementary school children that don't learn and fall behind-and found that there's nothing wrong with their intelligence, they have undiagnosed health problems. They have vision or hearing problems, which traditional tests don't catch, but are easily corrected once diagnosed.

The organization has not abandoned the early work, it now concentrates on that small group whose problems are the result of paralyzing disabilities which are very easily remedied. We have refocused on developing the diagnostic tools, on training school nurses in giving the tests, on having a mobile clinic visit the school at the beginning and the end of each year and testing children. Now we are thinking of abandoning the mentoring for the kids helped by the new tests. Sure these kids need a mentor or volunteer, but by and large they are so incredibly elevated, charged by suddenly being able to read, suddenly being able to hear, to listen, by having regained full function. They don't need much help, they need a cheering section.

We are just about to take this beyond the community because this is probably not just an American, but a worldwide problem. We hope that within five years we'll have something that can be replicated in every school district in this country using very simple tools that would make a major difference.

We will probably spin off the original organization to continue to work with normal children who don't do well in elementary school. My friends and I will concentrate on where we know how to produce significant results with our volunteers and the very little money we have, and with the cooperation of the schools and the school nurse and ophthalmologists and audiologists who donate their services. And through the widespread availability of better testing, we expect in ten years to have eliminated these problems, to have cured them.

This is the discipline of innovation. It means having a clear mission. It means defining what you mean by results. It means the ability and willingness to abandon where you don't get results. And then -- when you find the real opportunity, the unique opportunity where you can make the greatest difference, zone in on it, and reassess and reassess and reassess. This is a discipline. This is not being brilliant, it's being conscientious. This is not looking at needs alone, it's looking at need and opportunity. Do we have the need? Yes, the need is very great. But in this group of kids, there is the opportunity. In three to six months, you can change a life for the rest of that person's life, not just for the next two weeks. That is what you concentrate on.

In a rapidly changing society innovation is badly needed because the problems are changing. All societies need the community organization that is out to make a difference, the organization that works on the local level with local volunteers and gives them opportunities to contribute. These volunteers are successful people, but they need significance and to have results, especially results that show all of us that we can make a difference, we can change things, that we can get a return on our hard work, our good intentions, our citizenship. This is what the discipline of innovation is all about.