“By their fruits ye shall know them.”
Society in all developed countries has become a society of organizations in which most, if not all, social tasks are being done in and by an organization. Organizations do not exist for their own sake. They are means: each society’s organ for the discharge of one social task. The organization’s goal is a specific contribution to individual and society. The test of its performance, unlike that of a biological organism, therefore, always lies outside itself. This means that we must know what “performance” means for this or that institution.
Each institution will be the stronger the more clearly it defines its objectives. It will be more effective the more yardsticks and measurements there are against which its performance can be appraised. It will be more legitimate the more strictly it bases authority on justification by performance. “By their fruits ye shall know them”—this might well be the fundamental constitutional principle of the new pluralist society of institutions.
ACTION POINT: Are your performance yardsticks appropriate to your objectives?
Post-Capitalist Society
The Age of Discontinuity
* Source: The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker