For many years, non-profit organizations felt that a good cause alone was enough. However, precisely because they don’t have a bottomline like profit organizations, it is even more important that they are well-managed. In this book, Peter Drucker provides a self-assessment process to address crucial fundamentals of what you are doing, why you are doing it, and what you must do to improve your organization’s performance, worth revisiting regularly. This free version of The Five Most Important Questions summary, provides an overview of these Five Questions.
The Importance of Self-Assessment
Drucker explains why self-assessment is crucial to any individual or organization that’s committed to becoming a leader: It requires that you focus on your mission, listen to your customers, and set higher standards/ encourage constructive dissent.
These ideas are expanded upon in the 5 essential questions for self-assessment outlined below. These 5 questions have withstood the test of time, and are presented in the book alongside additional inputs from other thought leaders.
The Five Most Important Questions: An Overview
Here’s an overview of the 5 questions. You can learn about these questions in greater detail in our complete version of The Five Most Important Questions summary. 
Question 1: What is Our Mission?
The mission captures the purpose of an organization’s existence. It has to encapsulate something that you believe in, at a deep and personal level, such that everyone in the organization understands and lives it. Drucker outlines what to consider in defining your mission. Jim Collin adds on by sharing how great organizations concurrently preserve their core, while stimulating progress.
Question 2: Who is Our Customer?
Only when you have clearly identified your customers can you focus on satisfying their needs. Drucker touches on your primary customers, supporting customers and how these customers will change. Philip Kotler adds on by sharing what it means to develop fans, not just attract customers.
Question 3: What does the Customer Value?
It’s common for organizations to make the wrong assumptions or inferences about the customers’ needs, wants and aspirations – these are complex questions that can be only addressed by the customers themselves.
Question 4: What are Our Results?
In a profit organization, one of the measurements of success is obviously profits. However, for non-profit organizations, success must be defined and measured differently, and Drucker outlines a few such considerations. Judith Rodin reminds us that results are both a goal and a test that we’re ontrack toward our long-term mission. You can learn more about this from our 10-page version of The Five Most Important Questions summary.
Question 5: What is Our Plan?
The process of self-assessment generates a plan, which presents where you want to be and how you intend to get there. Since it’s impossible to predict the future, the plan must keep evolving. Drucker outlines the role of stakeholders, and the 5 ingredients of an effective plan (abandonment, concentration, innovation, risk-taking and analysis). V. Kasturi Rangan reinforces that a plan is merely a starting point, and not a perfect blueprint. Management must continually refine, adapt and learn, for the plan to work.
Frances Hesselbein also contributes the 8 milestones for Transformational Leadership, which any organization will cross in the process of becoming a truly effective institution. This small book was originally written with social or nonprofit organizations as the focus, though the ideas are applicable to any organization or institution that wishes to achieve excellence. Our full version of The Five Most Important Questions summary lays out the details of these 8 milestone.
Getting the Most from The Five Most Important Questions
The 5 questions may appear simple, but are certainly not easy to answer. Drucker encourages you to take time to reflect upon each question and allow yourself to consider them carefully. Proper self-assessment could take weeks, if not months to complete, and the process is never finished as leaders constantly refocus and refine. Do check out our full book summary bundle for more details which includes an infographic, a 10-page text summary, and a 19-minute audio summary.
To aid you in your thinking process and to facilitate discussions, the book comes with a workbook with additional questions and exercises. For more details, do get the book here.
You can also get more details on how organizations concurrently preserve their core, while stimulating progress from our Good to Great summary.
About the Author of The Five Most Important Questions
The Five Most Important Questions You will Ever Ask About Your Organization is written by Peter F. Drucker—a writer, teacher, philosopher, reporter, and management consultant. He described himself as a “social ecologist” who explored the way human beings organize themselves and interact. He has predicted many management trends of the late 20th century/ 21st century and influenced many leaders. In the 1950s, he coined the term “knowledge worker,” and he spent the rest of his life examining what we today identify as the knowledge industry. Drucker authored 39 books and numerous scholarly and popular articles before he passed away in 2005.
The book also included contributions by thought leaders including Jim Collins, Philip Kotler, James Kouzes, Judith Rodin, V. Kasturi Rangan, and Frances Hesselbein.
The Five Most Important Questions Quotes
“True self-assessment is never finished. Leadership requires constant resharpening, refocusing, never really being satisfied.”
“Leadership has no choice but to anticipate the future and attempt to mold it.”
“Every mission statement has to reflect three things: opportunities, competence, and commitment.”
“To abandon anything is always bitterly resisted…Yet, abandonment comes first. Until that has been accomplished, little gets done.”
“With genuine participation, a decision doesn’t need to be sold…the decision itself becomes a commitment to action.”
“Your plan leads you to work for results. It converts intentions into actions.”
