Peter Drucker

Known as the management guru to all other gurus, Peter Drucker has authored over three dozen books, almost every one of them a best seller. His ideas have received great recognition and businesses everywhere have strived to put into practice his management principles. And yet for all the fame that his teachings and advice brought him, Drucker's ideas remained forever simple and down to earth. Here are a few key ideas for business owners that will benefit them in the long run.

* Do not go hunting for perfection. Look around and look for the obvious - Whether in terms of a product or a service, or hiring an employee, a company should see what is needed to fulfill a particular need. You do not need anything perfect, what is needed is a solution. This will not only lead you to better identify and better model your product but also help you choose employees that fit well with your business needs.
* Give employees all the room they need to grow - You should show your employees that you care about their growth as well and not just about the growth of the business. Let them see what opportunities exist to learn. By allowing them to learn continuously, you are only making your business stronger in the current knowledge economy.
* Teach as much as you can - Only through teaching can you truly understand concepts that you thought you already knew. Only when you have to teach someone else will you realize the depth and significance of a concept.
* Hone your decision-making skills - Every time you make a decision, note down what you expect the outcome to be. Six months or nine months later, you should review what you had noted and what the actual outcome has been. This will let you evaluate what your strengths and weaknesses as a decision maker are.
* Seek out inconsistencies - There should be consistency in your business between the way you would like the business to function and grow, and the way employees view the business. Look at ways in which you can realign these goals so that there is no inconsistency and your business can move ahead faster.
* Put yourself in the customer's shoes - As valid today as it was years back, Drucker suggests that you should leave no stone unturned in trying to understand what will add value to a product that the customer is interested in. He also emphasized that a business should aim at innovation rather than at novelty. While novelty products are viewed with suspicion or humor, innovation always adds value to the products. Think the way customers would. Ask yourself, what will this do for me and should I be paying so much for this?
* Improve running systems - Even if you have a wonderful system in place, you can always work on improving it. Whether it is a product or service, sales and customer service or marketing issues, look at ways in which things can be done more efficiently.