Page 187 - The Drucker Lectures

168 [ The Drucker Lectures

fice and that agency to serve its customers better; on enabling the
Ex-Im Bank [the Export-Import Bank of the United States] to
help the small and medium-sized American company to become
a successful, competitor on the world markets; on having better
training here and better performance evaluation there. And this
is what is true achievement. The individual changes probably do
not amount to much. There is a long and slow learning curve in
such matters. But the enormous achievement—and I don’t think
it is possible to overrate it—is that you have created receptiv-
ity and responsibility throughout the federal establishment, or at
least throughout a good part of it.
This is enormous. But why, then, has it not received atten-
tion? It’s precisely because it is improvement. It is improvement
of things that are already being done. And it is improvement of
individual, isolated operations. This is how one begins. But it
is just good intentions unless it becomes permanent, organized,
self-generated habit. If I may use a metaphor, you have scattered
seeds. A good many of them are showing their first seedlings.
But a lot of seedlings do not make a crop.
Let me be very blunt. I was amused when I read the press
release about the performance at the Ex-Im Bank. For the very
achievements that it announced were ones that I discussed at least
20 years ago with a then newly appointed director of the Ex-Im
Bank, an old friend of mine. And he proudly reported to me that
he had done exactly what you now report having done in 1993 and
1994. Both reports were true. He had actually done it. But a few
years later it had disappeared again. And it disappeared because
he did not succeed—I do not know whether he even tried—to in-
still in his organization the habit of continuous improvement with
clear goals, with clear direction, with organized measurement.
The next stage is to move from isolated achievements,
needed though they are, to the habit of continuous improvement
throughout the agencies of the federal government. We know