Over the past three months, I hadn’t gotten my Fortune magazine. Based on a combination of moving from Syracuse to Boca Raton and that my subscription expired, I hadn’t read the publication for some time. So this morning, sitting outside drinking coffee and eating Cote France’s wonderful almond croissants, I had the chance to renew my longstanding love for this magazine. The magazine (which I now also have on my iPad) gave me a chance to read stories that started with Peter Drucker and ended up with the epic battle between on going between Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page in the Battle for the Future of the Web. My only wish is that the Fortune website would make it easier to find the articles from the print pub so I can make sure that my students and friends can read them.
I particularly liked the short piece on Francis Hesselbein, who reminded me again of one of Drucker’s five questions:
1. What is our mission?
2. Who is our customer?
3. What does the customer value?
4. What are our results?
5. What is our plan?
For Hesselbein, who used to be the CEO for the Girl Scouts of USA, the mission was “short, powerful and compelling: To help each girl reach her own highest potential.” You have to love that mission, and it isn’t something that would be spit out of the Dilbert Mission Statement generating machine.
