Famous Quotes & Sayings

Peter F. Drucker Quotes & Sayings

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Famous Quotes By Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1006898

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 880671

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 2180342

Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 2008911

One reason why it is difficult for management to accept unexpected success is that all of us tend to believe that anything that has lasted a fair amount of time must be 'normal' and go on 'forever'. Anything that contradicts what we have come to consider a law of nature is then rejected as unsound, unhealthy, and obviously abnormal. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 267128

Around here, I am only the guy who is responsible. If these men don't know what to do when they run into an enemy in the jungle, I'm too far away to tell them. My job is to make sure they know. What they do depends on the situation which only they can judge. The responsibility is always mine, but the decision lies with whoever is on the spot." In — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1611116

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 456239

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1292731

plan, organize, integrate, motivate, and measure. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1545627

While almost every large organization has an appraisal procedure, few of them actually use it. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 2070382

Thus the unexpected success is not just an opportunity for innovation; it demands innovation. It forces us to ask, What basic changes are now appropriate for this organization in the way it defines its business? Its technology? Its markets? If these questions are faced up to, then the unexpected success is likely to open up the most rewarding and least risky of all innovative opportunities. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 447125

Setting a posteriority is also unpleasant. Every posteriority is somebody else's top priority. It is much easier to draw up a nice list of top priorities and then to hedge by trying to do "just a little bit" of everything else as well. This makes everybody happy. The only drawback is, of course, that nothing whatever gets done. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1197302

Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society. The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees the major task in society - and especially in the economy - as doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done. That is basically what Say, two hundred years ago, meant when he coined the term entrepreneur. It was intended as a manifesto and as a declaration of dissent: the entrepreneur upsets and disorganizes. As Joseph Schumpeter formulated it, his task is creative destruction. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1401179

During the process that precedes the decision, no mention is made of what the answer might be. This is done so that people will not be forced to take sides; once they have taken sides, a decision would be a victory for one side and a defeat for the other. Thus the whole process is focused on finding out what the decision is really about, not what the decision should be. Its result is a meeting of the minds that there is (or is not) a need for a change in behavior. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 104252

We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1038127

No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1470970

Human existence is possible as existence not in despair, as existence not in tragedy - it is possible as existence in faith. The opposite of Sin - to use the traditional term for existence purely in society - is not virtue; it is faith. Faith is the belief that in God the impossible is possible, that in Him time and eternity are one, that both life and death are meaningful. In my favorite among Kierkegaard's books, a little volume called Fear and Trembling[published in 1843], — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 597794

Managers are action-focused; they are not philosophers and should not be. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 619480

It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem - which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1825655

For the existing enterprise, whether business or public-service institution, the controlling word in the term 'entrepreneurial management' is 'entrepreneurial'. For the new venture, it is 'management'. In the existing business, it is the existing that is the main obstacle to entrepreneurship. In the new venture, it is its absence. The new venture has an idea. It may have a product or a service. It may even have sales, and sometimes quite a substantial volume of them. It surely has costs. And it may have revenues and even profits. What it does not have is a 'business', a viable, operating, organized 'present' in which people know where they are going, what they are supposed to do, and what the results are or should be. But unless a new venture develops into a new business and makes sure of being 'managed', it will not survive no matter how brilliant the entrepreneurial idea, how much money it attracts, how good its products, nor even how great the demand for them. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 624628

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1862188

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1234038

Effective executives know that their subordinates are paid to perform and not to please their superiors. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 2033087

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 179265

The unexpected success is an opportunity, but it makes demands. It demands to be taken seriously. It demands to be staffed with the ablest people available, rather than with whoever we can spare. It demands seriousness and support on the part of management equal to the size of the opportunity. And the opportunity is considerable. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1419070

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 915946

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 351936

Sometimes we understand what is going on. But sometimes it is impossible to figure out why rising demand does not result in better performance. The innovator, therefore, need not always try to understand why things do not work as they should. He should ask instead: 'What would exploit this incongruity? What would convert it into an opportunity? What can be done?' Incongruity between economic realities is a call to action. Sometimes the action to be taken is rather obvious, even though the problem itself is quite obscure. And sometimes we understand the problem thoroughly and yet cannot figure out what to do about it. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1412070

Entrepreneurs, by definition, shift resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield. Of course, there is a risk they may not succeed. But if they are even moderately successful, the returns should be more than adequate to offset whatever risk there might be. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1809481

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 179395

1. The first is simply not to try to be clever. Innovations have to be handled by ordinary human beings, if they are to attain any size and importance at all, by morons or near-morons. Incompetence, after all, is the only thing in abundant and never-failing supply. Anything too clever, whether in design or execution, is almost bound to fail. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1195017

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1586916

Staffing the opportunities instead of the problems not only creates the most effective organization, it also creates enthusiasm and dedication. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1647005

Only a clear, focused, and common mission can hold the organization together and enable it to produce results. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1659265

The "non-profit" institution neither supplies goods or services not controls. Its "product" is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human-change agents. Their "product" is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1671725

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1642161

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1684160

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 252510

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

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The most important thing about priorities and posteriorities is not intelligent analysis but courage. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1605008

But,' the chairman continued, 'in this kind of store, it is normal and healthy for fashion to produce seventy per cent of sales. Appliance sales have grown so fast that they now account for three-fifths. And that's abnormal. We've tried everything we know to make fashion grow to restore the normal ratio, but nothing works. The only thing left now is to push appliance sales down to where they should be. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1599776

Entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1698532

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

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There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. — Peter F. Drucker

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The truly important events on the outside are not the trends. They are changes in the trends. — Peter F. Drucker

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The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 2184624

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 91155

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

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Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 2129450

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 2044900

Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making friends and influencing people", that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 2014529

There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 2008989

The creative imitator looks at products or services from the viewpoint of the customer. IBM's personal computer is practically indistinguishable from the Apple in its technical features, but IBM from the beginning offered the customer programs and software. Apple maintained traditional computer distribution through specialty stores. IBM - in a radical break with its own traditions - developed all kinds of distribution channels, specialty stores, major retailers like Sears, Roebuck, its own retail stores, and so on. It made it easy for the consumer to buy and it made it easy for the consumer to use the product. These, rather than hardware features, were the "innovations" that gave IBM the personal computer market. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1976516

The computer is a moron. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1974526

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1774857

Innovations had better be capable of being started small, requiring at first little money, few people, and only a small and limited market. Otherwise, there is not enough time to make the adjustments and changes that are almost always needed for an innovation to succeed. Initially innovations rarely are more than 'almost right'. The necessary changes can be made only if the scale is small and the requirements for people and money fairly modest. — Peter F. Drucker

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We need far too many leaders to depend only on the naturals. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1908234

One cannot hire a hand - the whole man always comes with it, — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1866446

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1862501

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1468545

This failure to ask reflects human stupidity less than it reflects human history. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1844075

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1843306

The people who get nothing done often work a great deal harder. In the first place, they underestimate the time for any one task. They always expect that everything will go right. Yet, as every executive knows, nothing ever goes right. The unexpected always happens - the unexpected is indeed the only thing one can confidently expect. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1839138

Of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, understanding how you learn is the easiest to acquire. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 876744

Measuring requires, first and foremost, analytical ability. But it also demands that measurement be used to make self-control possible rather than abused to control people from the outside and above - that is, to dominate them. It is the common violation of this principle that largely explains why measurement is the weakest area in the work of the manager today. As long as measurements are abused as a tool of control (for instance, as when measurements are used, as a weapon of an internal secret police that supplies audits and critical appraisals of a manager's performance to the boss without even sending a carbon copy to the manager himself) measuring will remain the weakest area in the manager's performance.2 — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1136701

Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1107243

The assertion that "somebody else will not let me do anything" should always be suspected as a cover-up for inertia. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1061985

The lines between these seven source areas of innovative opportunities are blurred, and there is considerable overlap between them. They can be likened to seven windows, each on a different side of the same building. Each window shows some features that can also be seen from the window on either side of it. But the view of the centre of each is distinct and different. The seven sources require separate analysis, for each has its own distinct characteristic. No area is, however, inherently more important or more productive than the other. Major innovations are as likely to come out of an analysis of symptoms of change (such as the unexpected success of what was considered an insignificant change in product or pricing) as they are to come out of the massive application of new knowledge resulting from a great scientific breakthrough. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1060404

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 405078

The true, the universal meaning is that human existence is possible, only possible, in faith. In faith, the individual becomes the universal, ceases to be isolated, becomes meaningful and absolute; hence in faith there is a true ethic. And in faith existence in society becomes meaningful too as existence in true charity. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 969550

I've seen more institutions damaged by too much caution than by rashness, though I've seen both. — Peter F. Drucker

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The lesson of the Ford story is that managers and management are the specific need of the business enterprise, its specific organ, and its basic structure. We can say dogmatically that enterprise cannot do without managers. One cannot argue that management does the owner's job by delegation. Management is needed not only because the job is too big for any one man to do himself, but because managing an enterprise is something essentially different from managing one's own property. — Peter F. Drucker

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If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 477569

Entrepreneurship is "risky" mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing. — Peter F. Drucker

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The knowledge that we consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information in action, information focused on results. — Peter F. Drucker

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Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art. — Peter F. Drucker

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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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 745805

There is tremendous stress these days on liking people, helping people, getting along with people, as qualifications for a manager. These alone are never enough. In every successful organization there is one boss who does not like people, who does not help them, and who does not get along with them. Cold, unpleasant, demanding, he often teaches and develops more men than anyone else. He commands more respect than the most likable man ever could. He demands exacting workmanship of himself as well as of his men. He sets high standards and expects that they will be lived up to. He considers only what is right and never who is right. And though often himself a man of brilliance, he never rates intellectual brilliance above integrity in others. The manager who lacks these qualities of character - no matter how likable, helpful, or amiable, no matter even how competent or brilliant - is a menace and should be adjudged "unfit to be a manager and a gentleman. — Peter F. Drucker

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There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 689848

Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 513681

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 502134

In an organization which manages by drives people either neglect their job to get on with the current drive, or silently organize for collective sabotage of the drive in order to get their work done. In either event they become deaf to the cry of "wolf." And when the real crisis comes, when all hands should drop everything and pitch in, they treat it as just another case of management-created hysteria. Management by drive is a sure sign of confusion. It is an admission of incompetence. It is a sign that management does not think. But, above all, it is a sign that the company does not know what to expect of its managers and that, not knowing how to direct them, it misdirects them. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 493094

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1258652

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes — Peter F. Drucker

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Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems. — Peter F. Drucker

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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

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Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 482957

A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1442232

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 344428

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1345723

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1322196

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1569192

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1203624

Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 395384

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1187871

Fifty years later, in the 1920s, the American DuPont Company independently set up a similar unit and called it a Developmental Department. This department gathers innovative ideas from all over the company, studies them, thinks them through, analyses them. Then it proposes to top management which ones should be tackled as major innovative projects. From the beginning, it brings to bear on the innovation all the resources needed: research, development, manufacturing, marketing, finance, and so on. It is in charge until the new product or service has been on the market for a few years. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1177939

The people who work within these industries or public services know that there are basic flaws. But they are almost forced to ignore them and to concentrate instead on patching here, improving there, fighting the fire or caulking that crack. They are thus unable to take the innovation seriously, let alone to try to compete with it. They do not, as a rule, even notice it until it has grown so big as to encroach on their industry or service, by which time it has become irreversible. In the meantime, the innovators have the field to themselves. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1175378

This defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship - the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity. — Peter F. Drucker

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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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1170065

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

Peter F. Drucker Quotes 1148925

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