Concurrent A1

Putting Drucker to Work: Human Options Inc Case Study

NB: Concurrent A1 is the first half of a continuous presentation. Delegates attending Concurrent A1 are also expected to attend Concurrent B1.

This workshop, first presented at the Drucker Leadership and Management Conference, 2000, (1) takes participants through Drucker’s five questions, while focusing on the critical issues of growth and contribution that Human Options Inc faced in the mid-1990s and (2) demonstrates how the Drucker Tool and a ‘Paired Values’ strategy were used successfully as a framework for decision-making. This case study covers a ten year period of new challenges.

Human Options Inc is a multi-service agency for abused women and their children, offering programs in emergency shelter, transitional housing, counselling and community education.

The Drucker Tool process asks an organisation’s leadership team and its key customers to think through 5 important questions:

1. What is Our Business (Mission)?
2. Who is Our Customer(s)?
3. What Does the Customer Consider Value?
4. What Have Been the Results?
5. What is the Plan?

Co-Presenter: Constance Rossum

Dr Constance Rossum is Associate Professor of Marketing and Management at the University of La Verne and is President of Management Directives, Inc. an independent consulting firm for business, government and nonprofit organisations in the areas of strategic planning, marketing and research. Constance’s dual perspective in the business and social sectors and her study and use of Peter F. Drucker’s principles of management were the basis for her selection by the Drucker Foundation to develop the Drucker Foundation Self-Assessment Tool for Nonprofit Organisations in 1993. In 1997, based on her continuing work with the Drucker Tool, Constance received the Drucker Management Centre’s prestigious Alumni Award for Outstanding Entrepreneurship.

In 1997-98, Peter Drucker served on her Ph.D. dissertation committee at Claremont Graduate University – she was his last Ph.D. student!

Before founding Management Directives, Inc. in 1991, Constance worked for 20 years in advertising, marketing/management, and consumer research for such major companies as Leo Burnett Advertising and the Marriott Corporation.

Constance completed her undergraduate studies in Radio/TV and graduate work in Journalism at Indiana University, Bloomington, and received her M.A. in Management from the Drucker Management Centre at Claremont Graduate University, where she also earned her Ph.D. in Education and Management.

Co-Presenter: Roe Piccoli

Roe Piccoli, M.S., M.F.T., has been the Program Director for Human Options Domestic Violence Emergency Shelter for the past ten years. Prior to this, she directed an alcohol and drug recovery home for women and children. She was licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist in 1992, and has a private practice specialising in relationships and mood disorders.