Page 245 - The Drucker Lectures

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knew no science. But he invented the modern research technique
in which you don’t start out with new facts; you start out with a
goal. You basically work back from a goal. And all of the success-
ful campaigns of the last 60 or 70 years are based on it. NASA
was modeled after the polio campaign, where you start out with
the end product and work backward, figuring out “what do we
have to know first?” and so on. And this was the 1930s when it
started. And decades later, polio vaccines were developed. And
that’s when the March of Dimes should have dissolved itself.
They should have said, “We have accomplished what we were
out to do. Thank you good people for all your support. Let’s have
a huge bash, drink a lot of champagne, and go out of business.”
But they saw that they had built a fabulous money-raising ma-
chine. Nothing raised as much money as the March of Dimes did.
And so they said, “We can’t possibly let that go to waste. So let’s
invent purposes.” And that’s now 50 years of inventing purposes.
Fortunately, they don’t raise much money. People are not quite
that stupid. But they waste much too much. They haven’t accom-
plished anything, not a thing, except 20 jobs for overpaid people.
Results are not forever. I’ll give you one example. In Kansas
City, there’s a Lutheran agency that has been incredibly success-
ful with the homeless. They rehabilitate about 40 percent. The
highest rate anybody else has is about 10 percent. They look at
the homeless and do not worry about the ones where they will
not succeed. They say, “We look for the ones where we can make
a difference.”
Those Lutherans bought up totally dilapidated housing, and
their volunteers rebuilt those houses into model homes—spank-
ing clean, nice, painted, and beautifully lit. And then they find the
homeless jobs. And each of these volunteers is then assigned to
look after a family until it’s rehabilitated. Another key to success:
Once that family has found a job and is rehabilitated, the agency
expects them to become volunteers. That’s a very important key.