Peter F. Drucker quotes
There is an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job.
Business, that's easily defined - it's other people's money.
Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
The computer is a moron.
When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.
Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer...
Borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
Everybody has accepted by now that change is unavoidable. But that still implies that change is like death and taxes it should be postponed as long as possible and no change would be vastly preferable. But in a period of upheaval, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm.
Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations... They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them 'operators' or 'programmers.'
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.
My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.
Never mind your happiness; do your duty.
No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.
People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the "naturals," the ones who somehow know how to teach.
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.
Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans.
We can say with certainty - or 90% probability - that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to do with information.
We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.