“The change leader puts every product, every service, every process, every market, every distribution channel, every customer and end-use, on trial for its life… The question has to be asked—and asked seriously—'If we did not do this already, would we, knowing what we now know, go into it?'”
On Trial for Its Life
From Peter F. Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st Century (HarperBusiness, 1999), section I “Change Policies,” p. 74. The section opens by rejecting a popular equation: making an organization receptive to innovation, Drucker writes, “is not nearly enough to be a change leader. It might even be a distraction.” The change leader’s work is to change what is already being done as much as to start new things, and organized abandonment, the first of the section’s policies, is the half that gets skipped.
This quote is how that half gets done. The trial is recurring (Drucker calls for it “on a regular schedule”) and walks the institution’s full portfolio: product, service, process, market, channel, customer, end-use. The baseline is whether anyone would start the thing today, knowing what is now known. A “no” demands a decision: Drucker writes that the reaction must be “What do we do now?”