Top 100 Peter F. Drucker Quotes
#1. this book itself is not a book on what people at the top do or should do. It is addressed to everyone who, as a knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization.
Peter F. Drucker
#2. The most important thing about priorities and posteriorities is not intelligent analysis but courage.
Peter F. Drucker
#3. Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.
Peter F. Drucker
#4. There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.
Peter F. Drucker
#5. Not to innovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing organizations. Not to know how to manage is the single largest reason for the failure of new ventures.
Peter F. Drucker
#6. In the Next Society's corporation, top management will be the company. Everything else can be outsourced.
Peter F. Drucker
#7. But there seems to be little correlation between a man's effectiveness and his intelligence, his imagination or his knowledge.
Peter F. Drucker
#8. I read a lot of history, biographies, science, and novels,' he says, ushering a reporter out the door with a hint of relief. 'I do not read management or economics.'
(from an interview in the Christian Science Monitor, July 26, 1993)
Peter F. Drucker
#9. 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.
Peter F. Drucker
#10. Staffing the opportunities instead of the problems not only creates the most effective organization, it also creates enthusiasm and dedication.
Peter F. Drucker
#11. For every organization needs performance in three major areas: It needs direct results; building of values and their reaffirmation; and building and developing people for tomorrow.
Peter F. Drucker
#12. A well-managed factory is boring. Nothing exciting happens in it because the crises have been anticipated and have been converted into routine.
Peter F. Drucker
#13. Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.
Peter F. Drucker
#14. Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.
Peter F. Drucker
#16. Only a clear, focused, and common mission can hold the organization together and enable it to produce results.
Peter F. Drucker
#17. Effective executives know that their subordinates are paid to perform and not to please their superiors.
Peter F. Drucker
#18. But above all, meetings have to be the exception rather than the rule. An organization in which everybody meets all the time is an organization in which no one gets anything done.
Peter F. Drucker
#19. The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations: communications; teamwork; self-development; and development of others.
Peter F. Drucker
#20. The incongruity between perceived and actual reality typically characterizes a whole industry or a whole service area. The solution, however, should again be small and simple, focused and highly specific.
Peter F. Drucker
#21. The problem in my life and other people's lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.
Peter F. Drucker
#23. 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.
Peter F. Drucker
#24. The three most charismatic leaders in this century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader's charisma. What matters is the leader's mission.
Peter F. Drucker
#25. If there is any one "secret" of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.
Peter F. Drucker
#26. Is this still worth doing? And if it isn't, he gets rid of it so as to be able to concentrate on the few tasks that, if done with excellence, will really make a difference in the results of his own job and in the performance of his organization.
Peter F. Drucker
#27. 3. Finally, don't try to innovate for the future. Innovate for the present! An innovation may have long-range impact; it may not reach its full maturity until twenty years later.
Peter F. Drucker
#28. A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.
Peter F. Drucker
#29. Restructuring a job usually means restructuring a score of jobs, moving people around, and upsetting everybody. There is one exception: the exceedingly rare, truly exceptional man for whose sake the rule should be broken.
Peter F. Drucker
#30. Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.
Peter F. Drucker
#31. Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.
Peter F. Drucker
#32. 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?2
Peter F. Drucker
#33. But it is meaningless to speak of short-range and long-range plans. There are plans that lead to action today - and they are true plans, true strategic decisions. And there are plans that talk about action tomorrow - they are dreams, if not pretexts for nonthinking, nonplanning, nondoing. The
Peter F. Drucker
#34. What is our mission? Who is our customer? What does the customer value? What are our results? and What is our plan?
Peter F. Drucker
#35. Two hundred people, of course, can do a great deal more work than one man. But it does not follow that they produce and contribute more.
Peter F. Drucker
#36. We need far too many leaders to depend only on the naturals.
Peter F. Drucker
#37. Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.
Peter F. Drucker
#38. An organization is not, like an animal, an end in itself, and successful by the mere act of perpetuating the species. An organization is an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makes to the outside environment.
Peter F. Drucker
#39. A man should never be appointed to a managerial position if his vision focuses on people's weaknesses rather than on their strengths. The man who always knows exactly what people cannot do, but never sees anything they can do, will undermine the spirit of his organization.
Peter F. Drucker
#40. 2. Don't diversify, don't splinter, don't try to do too many things at once. This is, of course, the corollary to the 'do': be focused!
Peter F. Drucker
#41. Keep your eye on the task, not on yourself. The task matters, and you are a servant.
Peter F. Drucker
#42. To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.
Peter F. Drucker
#44. Everyone can make the wrong decision - in fact, everyone will sometimes make a wrong decision. But no one needs to make a decision which, on its face, falls short of satisfying the boundary conditions.
Peter F. Drucker
#45. Today is always the result of actions and decisions taken yesterday. Man, however, whatever his title or rank, cannot foresee the future. Yesterday's actions and decisions, no matter how courageous or wise they may have been, inevitably become today's problems,
Peter F. Drucker
#46. No other area offers richer opportunities for successful innovation than the unexpected success. In no other area are innovative opportunities less risky and their pursuit less arduous. Yet the unexpected success is almost totally neglected; worse, managements tend actively to reject it.
Peter F. Drucker
#47. The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers.
The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.
Peter F. Drucker
#48. The assertion that "somebody else will not let me do anything" should always be suspected as a cover-up for inertia.
Peter F. Drucker
#49. There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Peter F. Drucker
#50. Decisions are made by men. Men are fallible; at their best their works do not last long. Even the best decision has a high probability of being wrong. Even the most effective one eventually becomes obsolete.
Peter F. Drucker
#51. Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.
Peter F. Drucker
#52. No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.
Peter F. Drucker
#55. The effective executive, therefore, asks: "What can my boss do really well?" "What has he done really well?" "What does he need to know to use his strength?" "What does he need to get from me to perform?" He does not worry too much over what the boss cannot do.
Peter F. Drucker
#56. Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.
Peter F. Drucker
#57. The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
Peter F. Drucker
#58. Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
Peter F. Drucker
#59. This failure to ask reflects human stupidity less than it reflects human history.
Peter F. Drucker
#60. Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes
Peter F. Drucker
#61. The one man to distrust, however, is the man who never makes a mistake, never commits a blunder, never fails in what he tries to do. He is either a phony, or he stays with the safe, the tried, and the trivial.
Peter F. Drucker
#62. Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
Peter F. Drucker
#64. People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete - the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.
Peter F. Drucker
#65. And it is change that always provides the opportunity for the new and different. Systematic innovation therefore consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic or social innovation.
Peter F. Drucker
#66. Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.
Peter F. Drucker
#67. If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old
Peter F. Drucker
#68. Of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, understanding how you learn is the easiest to acquire.
Peter F. Drucker
#69. To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change.
Peter F. Drucker
#70. Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves - their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.
Peter F. Drucker
#71. Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.
Peter F. Drucker
#72. Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
Peter F. Drucker
#73. The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness.
Peter F. Drucker
#74. Even today few businessmen understand that research, to be productive, has to be the "disorganizer," the creator of a different future and the enemy of today. In most industrial laboratories, "defensive research" aimed at perpetuating today, predominates.
Peter F. Drucker
#75. Knowledge work is not defined by quantity. Neither is knowledge work defined by its costs. Knowledge work is defined by its results.
Peter F. Drucker
#76. Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Peter F. Drucker
#77. 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.
Peter F. Drucker
#78. others is required, it probably indicates a lack of courtesy - that is, a lack of manners.
Peter F. Drucker
#79. Entrepreneurship is "risky" mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.
Peter F. Drucker
#80. When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
Peter F. Drucker
#81. a knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization. It is meant for every one of the men I call "executives.
Peter F. Drucker
#82. It is a law of nature that two moving bodies in contact with each other create friction. This is as true for human beings as it is for inanimate objects.
Peter F. Drucker
#83. So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
Peter F. Drucker
#84. This defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship - the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
Peter F. Drucker
#85. Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.
Peter F. Drucker
#86. Anyone who knows Western businesses, government agencies, or educational institutions knows that their managers make far too many small decisions as a rule. And nothing causes as much trouble in an organization as a lot of small decisions.
Peter F. Drucker
#87. The human being is a very poorly designed machine tool. The human being excels in coordination. He excels in relating perception to action. He works best if the entire human being, muscles, senses, and mind, is engaged in the work.
Peter F. Drucker
#88. There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.
Peter F. Drucker
#89. A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.
Peter F. Drucker
#90. Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution. Training and development must be built into it on all levels - training and development that never stop.
Peter F. Drucker
#92. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship ... the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
Peter F. Drucker
#94. Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
Peter F. Drucker
#95. The danger is in acting on what you believe satisfies the customer. You will inevitably make wrong assumptions. Leadership should not even try to guess at the answers; it should always go to customers in a systematic quest for those answers.
Peter F. Drucker
#96. Entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship.
Peter F. Drucker
#97. Managers are action-focused; they are not philosophers and should not be.
Peter F. Drucker
#98. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.
Peter F. Drucker
#99. Mutual understanding can never be attained by "communications down," can never be created by talking. It can result only from "communications up." It requires both the superior's willingness to listen and a tool especially designed to make lower managers heard.
Peter F. Drucker
#100. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the
product or service fits him and sells itself.
Peter F. Drucker
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