What is our specific knowledge?
A valid definition of the specific knowledge of a business sounds simple—deceptively so. It takes practice and regularity to do a knowledge analysis well. The first analysis may come up with embarrassing generalities such as: our business is communications, or transportation, or energy. These general terms may make good slogans for a salesmen’s convention; but to convert them to operational meaning—that is, to do anything with them—is impossible. But with repetition, the attempt to define the knowledge of one’s own business soon becomes easy and rewarding. Few questions force a management into as objective, as searching, as productive a look at itself as the question: “What is our specific knowledge?” No company can excel in many knowledge areas. A business may be able to excel in more than one area. A successful business has to be at least competent in a good many knowledge areas in addition to being excellent in one. But to have real knowledge of the kind for which the market offers economic reward requires concentration on doing a few things superbly well.
ACTION POINT: What are the few things that your organization does superbly well? Stay focused on them.
Managing for Results
* Source: The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker