“The purpose of the work on making the future is not to decide what should be done tomorrow, but what should be done today to have a tomorrow.”
Organizations that achieve objectives are in a dangerous position. They are likely to rest on their success and become mediocre. Instead, to grow, organizations must notice, accept, and exploit new risks. This is what it means to make the future today.
Drucker explains two ways this can be done. First, an organization can anticipate the future by exploiting an event that has already happened. Drucker gives several examples, the most fundamental being population change. A significant rise or fall in birth rates will change the future.
The other way is to make the future today through an idea with “wealth-producing potential.” One example in the book is IBM’s decision to provide data processing. No matter the event, data processing would always be needed, but changes had in fact made data processing a huge need. Another example is Sears Roebuck’s idea to increase the poor’s ability to buy on par with the rich.
The bottom line is that great companies do not rest on past successes. And they do not try to predict the future. Like an entrepreneur, they notice significant events and take calculated risks. If this is not done in a systematic way, an organization’s best days are probably behind it.
(Managing for Results, chapter 11)