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The Drucker Perspective: The Danger of Getting the Right Answer to the Wrong Question

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Introduction

Peter F. Drucker contended that the most serious mistakes are not being made as the result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.

If one asks the right question but gets the wrong answer, in most instances, with the proper feedback information, corrective actions can be taken.

But if one asks the wrong question and gets the right answer to that question, chances are irreparable damage will be done - and it will take years (if ever) to discover the wrong question was asked.

This article explains – in clear, practical language – why asking the right question has never been more important, especially in government policymaking.

A Story Told to Us by a Former Entrepreneur Now City Cab Driver Who Makes the Wrong/Right Question Stunningly Clear

Take – for example – the story of a Russian entrepreneur who went bankrupt because of an unsuccessful business venture. The reason for this costly blunder? He asked the wrong question and got the right answer.

The Russian entrepreneur opened up a nightclub in a section of New York populated by Russians. It featured homestyle Russian cooking coupled with a Russian-like atmosphere.

Indeed, it was an instant success with respect to attracting customers.

The entrepreneur hired a master chef who worked 25 years for a very wealthy Russian family. He was a superb chef. The entrepreneur lured the chef away from the family by giving him a substantial ownership position in the nightclub.

The problem? When working for the family, the chef had to cook for only six to 10 people. Working in a nightclub required cooking for 150 – 200 people.

Further, it also required the chef to manage a rather large cooking staff. Needless to say, after the grand opening of the nightclub, it was immediately apparent that the chef/part-owner was the wrong person for the job.

Right Answers Versus Right Questions

The Russian entrepreneur and his financial partners failed to ask the following questions: What is the task? What are the experience and skillsets required to carry out the task? Does the appointee understand the job?

Those were the right questions. However, the only question asked was: "How good a cook is the candidate?" He was a superb cook! Yes, that was a correct answer to the question asked.

But it was the wrong question. The result? The Russian entrepreneur is now a cab driver. (He told this story to one of our editors during a cab ride when he was visiting NYC).

By the time it was discovered the chef was ill-equipped for the responsibilities of cooking for and managing the nightclub's kitchen, customer demand had vanished. And the nightclub's reputation was beyond repair.

Conducting Market Research For a Nonexistent Product

Drucker believed there is no way of carrying out a conventional market research study on a truly new product.

Further, he often said that one cannot conduct market research on something not in the market – especially if the wrong question is asked.

For example, Henry Ford's Model T automobile was one of the most successful inventions/product launches of all time.

Indeed, Ford was widely regarded as the quintessential symbol of marketing/industrial genius.

Ford created the modern automobile industry. He gave people, at that time in history, what they wanted, needed, valued, expected and were willing and able to pay for.

According to Steve Jobs: "If Ford had asked people via a focus group/sample surveys what they wanted, they would've said 'faster horses.'" The right answer but to the wrong question. (In a future article we will discuss how to research opportunities for the truly new and different.)

Still Another Market Research Example…

The fax machine, noted Drucker, was "American in invention, technology, design and development." And, U.S. manufacturers had fax machines all ready to be sold. But market research convinced them that there was no demand for such a gadget...

…One can suppose 30 or so years ago, the question asked to prospective customers was: "Would you buy a telephone accessory that cost upwards of $1500 and enables you to send, for $1 dollar a page, the same letter the post office delivers for 25 cents?'"

The answer, predictably, was "no."

Said Drucker: "… The Japanese asked, 'What is the market for what the fax machine does?'

… And they immediately saw, when looking at the growth of courier services such as Federal Express in the '70s and early '80s, the market for the fax machine had already been established…"

As a result of asking the right question, the Japanese dominated the fax machine marketplace… and few American companies entered the marketplace until it was too late to secure a major market position.

The Right Question Can Change Your Decision

Drucker, in Adventures of a Bystander, tells us how the legendary chairman of General Motors, Alfred D. Sloan, had the uncanny ability to ask the right questions:

“Decisions on people usually provoked heated debate in the GM executive committee.

Once, the whole GM committee seemed to be agreed on one candidate for president of an operating division, who had handled this crisis superbly, solved that problem beautifully and quenched yonder fire with great aplomb.

Mr. Sloan, finally, broke in. ‘A very impressive record your Mr. Smith has,’ he said. ‘But do explain to me how he gets into all these crises he then so brilliantly surmounts?'

Nothing more was ever heard of Mr. Smith."

The Point?

There are really several points here worth discussing. For starters, Mr. Sloan had a different perception than the executive committee.

The executive committee focused on how Mr. Smith solved one problem after the other with great skill. Mr. Sloan focused on why Mr. Smith had so many problems to solve.

Mr. Sloan was implying that Mr. Smith should have been preventing problems from occurring rather than solving them after they occurred.

Further, Mr. Sloan recognized Mr. Smith was frittering away his energy by becoming deeply enveloped in problems and spending very little time on identifying and capitalizing upon new opportunities.

Instead of being entrepreneurial-minded, Mr. Sloan suspected (we assume) Mr. Smith was a superb arsonist. And he expected and was receiving accolades/promotions for "putting out fires" and not for creating and managing growth.

Perception is based on education, knowledge, experience and wisdom. The executive committee had a different perception of Mr. Smith.

Mr. Sloan's perception was based on his years of experience in picking people and ultimately judging them on their performance and results with respect to growing and strengthening the organization – not just on solving problems.

Conflicts Require Defining Questions Asked & Answered

Drucker observed most organizational/people conflicts result from people asking and answering different questions.

In short: assume all conflicting parties are providing correct answers. However, also assume they are answering different questions.

Drucker wrote: "Never ask, 'Who is right' in a conflict. Never even ask, 'What is right?' The proper response is to discover, first, what the question is that everyone is answering."

Next time you are in a debate, focus on the question being answered. Chances are you'll be surprised those with an adversarial position cannot render explicit the question being answered.

Further, it's quite possible that you will also be confused about what the question is.

The near-insanity of what's taking place in Washington can be traced to disagreement on what the right questions are rather than what the answers are.

Winning Frames

In a marvelous book entitled Decision Traps: The Ten Barriers to Brilliant Decision Making and How to Overcome Them, J. Edward Russo and Paul J. H. Schoemaker detail the importance of selecting a winning frame.

They define framing as the process of structuring the right question.

Translated, this means "defining what must be decided and determining in a preliminary way what criteria would cause you to prefer one option over another."

The analogy of a window frame, Russo and Schoemaker observe, nicely illustrates the importance of the right frame.

"Architects choose where to put windows to give the desired view. But no single window can reveal the entire panorama.

When you choose which window to look through - or even if you decide to keep track of what's happening through three different windows - you can never be sure in advance that you'll get the most useful picture.

The framing of a decision inevitably sets boundaries; it controls what is in and what is out... our frames tend to focus us on certain things while leaving others obscured... "

An Example and its Lessons

John Sculley was vice-president of marketing for Pepsi-Cola in the '1970s when Pepsi was running a distant second to Coca-Cola. (Sculley subsequently became chairman of Apple Computer.)

The following example illustrates the importance of correctly framing the problem or asking the right question. Indeed, the right question, in this case, transformed Pepsi-Cola.

The following is excerpted and slightly paraphrased from Decision Traps:

"Sculley recalls in his autobiography, Odyssey, "that Pepsi-Cola executives believed for many years - rightly - that Coca-Cola's distinctive hourglass-shaped bottle was Coke's most important competitive advantage."

"The bottle design nearly became the product itself, Sculley recalls, 'it made coke easier to stack, more comfortable to grip and more sturdy to withstand the vending machines drop... "

"Sculley tells how Pepsi-Cola spent millions of dollars designing and redesigning their bottle to compete effectively with the Coke bottle. This effort continued for nearly 20 years."

But Pepsi just couldn't "innovatively imitate" the Coke bottle which had become a part of American culture. Then, suddenly, Sculley realized the problem was "framed" incorrectly.

In essence, he asked four Peter F. Drucker questions, "Who is the customer?" "How does the customer use what he or she buys?" "What does the customer value?" "What are the realities of the customer?"

Sculley realized his company didn't know very much about customers. He then launched a study to find answers to the above series of well-structured Drucker-inspired questions.

The results of the study, while obvious, startled Pepsi's executives. People tended to consume exactly the amount purchased.

Put differently, if the advertisements and promotions persuaded buyers to purchase more in a given week, people consumed more in a given week. And typically returned the next week to purchase the same amount as the prior week.

"It dawned on me," said Scully, "that what we needed to do was design packages that made it easier to get more soft drinks into the home." In short, Sculley re-framed the problem.

His new question was "How can we design new, larger and more varied packages to accomplish this objective? " The results were startling!

Coca-Cola's bottle became near-extinct. And Pepsi's market position expanded dramatically.

"Who Did This To Us?"

Bret Stephens, celebrated former Foreign Affairs columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote in his 9/29/16 column:

"Bernard Lewis once made the point that there are two basic ways in which people and nations respond to adversity and decline…

… The first, the great historian wrote in 2002, is to ask 'Who did this to us?'… The second is, 'What did we do wrong?'…

… One question leads to self-pity; the other to self-help… One disavows personal responsibility and moral agency; the other commands them...

… One is a recipe for economic failure and political squalor; the other for success…"

Mr. Stephens brilliantly explains – in clear, simple language – how nations and even activist minority groups with a change in the question asked can open up unforeseen possibilities, opportunities and actually solve the root cause of their problems.

Stated differently, the blame game accomplishes nothing. People (including government leaders) are often astonished how a simple change in question can produce dramatically positive results.

'In A Crisis, Don't Think With Your Feet'

Ongoing surveys of representative groups of Americans reveal a significant percentage of the population very worried about the future of America. And with good reason!

Every day we learn more about a worsening border invasion… Crime  out of control in many major cities… Prices – especially food and energy – going up at alarming rates…… America going from exporter to importer of fossil fuels… Police officers taking early retirement coupled with recruiting at an all-time low.

Every day we learn more about how today's proposed corporate and individual tax increases will have a far greater impact on working Americans in the form of lower wages, significantly declining 401(k) and pension fund values and a host of other happenings that will decrease standards of living.

Every day we learn more about government actions and proposed legislation that creates massive new government dependencies – equating to giant increases in welfare and entitlement payments coupled with no work requirements and no education/training requirements for receiving what could amount to both cash and non-cash incomes of $60,000/$65,000 per year.

Perhaps it's time for all government leaders to rethink the questions being asked. We all are enormously vulnerable to the confident claims and plausible promises of "experts" peddling answers.

We suggest, when attempting to evaluate current happenings, and listening to proposed solutions, try to focus on what questions are being asked – and if they are the right questions.

An Example

The evidence-based reality that the Trump tax cuts stimulated the American economy is without question.

Indeed, one of the reasons the economy is still humming is the lingering effect of those tax cuts.

Even though teachers' unions and other government unions were against lowering taxes, teachers and the like benefited from rising values of their 401(k)s and pension funds – a direct result of corporate tax reductions.

From published reports, it appears nationwide teachers unions and other government unions all support the new government proposals to dramatically raise individual and corporate taxes.

If these proposals are enacted, many authoritative sources including the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and the Penn/Wharton Budget Model (an econometric forecasting system with an enviable record of correct forecasts) predict a devastating impact on the economy.

And, in turn, the stock market will take a very serious tumble. Translated, the values of 401(k)s and pension funds could decrease at an increasing amount of decrease.

So, what's the question for the nationwide teachers/unions? Are they prepared for this happening?

Simply put, have they asked themselves the right question?

Similarly, many other groups – we believe – are asking the wrong question with respect to their future purchasing power, safety and the like.

Summary & Conclusions

Few things are important for a manager (and perhaps even the general public) than to ask the right questions.

Drucker felt beyond just getting the answers, the effective executive asks the right questions to get people to think rather than just to act, react or administer.

But let's be realistic. Asking the right questions requires wisdom which is a result of experience, knowledge and continuous learning.

"Success," said Drucker, was not "based on superior talent or intelligence but on applying talent and intelligence to the right things, whereas executives and unsuccessful organizations applied their talent and intelligence to the wrong things and asked the wrong questions."

Without the earned prerequisites and the acquired skill of building relationships with people who can help you see things in a different way, that is, from different perspectives, non-performance is almost guaranteed.

Over the next several months, we present various Drucker-inspired methodologies/processes - in various forms - to guide you in formulating the right question.


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