Page 197 - The Drucker Lectures

178 [ The Drucker Lectures

big retail chains. It is somebody in Ireland, a small country about
the size of Slovenia. This particular company is next door to Great
Britain with its very powerful supermarkets, and all of them are
also in Ireland. And yet this little company has maybe 60 percent
of the sandwich market. What do they do? Well, the answer is
that the boss spends two days each week in one of his stores serv-
ing customers, from the meat counter to the checkout counter, and
is the one who puts stuff into bags and carries it out to the shop-
pers’ automobiles. He knows what the customers pay for.
But let me go back to the beginning: The place to start man-
aging is not in the plant, and it is not in the office. You start with
managing yourself by finding out your own strengths, by placing
yourself where your strengths can produce results and making
sure that you set the right example (which is basically what eth-
ics is all about), and by placing your people where their strengths
can produce results.

From a talk delivered to the International Executive Development Center
in Slovenia.