Page 113 - The Drucker Lectures

94 [ The Drucker Lectures

Without any preparation they did a reasonable job, because
the objective was crystal clear. There were only three things you
were supposed to be doing. The first was to maintain law and or-
der. And when the district commissioner came, before he called
on that kid, he looked at the homes of the villagers. And if they
were padlocked, the kid was relieved of command immediately.
It was his job to have such good security in the village, there
were no bandits and nobody needed a lock. Secondly, in the land
of multiraces, multireligions, his job was to prevent people from
killing each other. And he did a better job than the Indian Re-
public has done, between you and me. In the whole history of
British India, fewer people were killed in religious riots between
Hindu and Muslims and Hindu and Sikhs and so on than are
being killed each year in India today. And his last task was to
collect taxes—and in that order, by the way. The idea was that if
you can’t maintain law and order, you aren’t going to get taxes.
They knew better than modern American administrations the
priorities of government.
And then every Saturday afternoon, that kid sat down and
wrote the report directed to the lieutenant general, in which he
copied down “What did we expect last week?” from his letter
of a week ago. Then he answered, “What did happen? What
is the explanation for the things we expected to happen that
didn’t? And for the things that we didn’t expect to happen that
did? And what do I expect will happen next week?” And every
one of these reports was answered by the lieutenant general or
by his political secretary. And so there was clarity of goals and
measurable results. You know, you can count the padlocks. Or
the ones who get killed in a riot over a cow. The results are care-
fully quantified. And you can also count taxes. Clear, upward
information responsibility.
And if you look at the most successful large organization we
have created since we first created the large corporation a hun-