Drucker Quotes & Sayings

Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission. — Peter Drucker

History has been written not by the most talented but by the most motivated. — Peter Drucker

The most important decisions in organizations are people decisions, and yet only the military, and only recently, has begun to ask, "If we assign this general to lead this base, what do we expect him to accomplish?" — Peter Drucker

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

One does not start with facts. One starts with opinions. — Peter Drucker

Thus, for those who are willing to go out into the field, to look and to listen, changing demographics is both a highly productive and a highly dependable innovation opportunity. — Peter Drucker

Profit for a company is like oxygen for a person. If you don't have enough of it, you're out of the game. But if you think your life is about breathing, you're really missing something. — Peter Drucker

The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness. — Peter F. Drucker

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. — Peter Drucker

A business exists because the consumer is willing to pay you his money. You run a business to satisfy the consumer. That isn't marketing. That goes way beyond marketing. — Peter Drucker

An organization which just perpetuates today's level of vision, excellence, and accomplishment has lost the capacity to adapt. — Peter Drucker

The postwar WWII GI Bill of Rights-and the enthusiastic response to it on the part of America's veterans-signaled the shift to the knowledge society. Future historians may consider it the most important event of the twentieth century. We are clearly in the midst of this transformation; indeed, if history is any guide, it will not be completed until 2010 or 2020. But already it has changed the political, economic and moral landscape of the world. — Peter Drucker

There's nothing so useless than executing a task efficiently when it actually never should have been executed at all. — Peter Drucker

In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from. — Peter Drucker

All good strategy eventually degenerates into work. — Peter Drucker

We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it. — Peter Drucker

One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it. — Peter Drucker

Managing innovation will increasingly become a challenge to management, and especially to top management, and a touchstone of its competence. — Peter Drucker

When a resource is scarce, you increase its yield. — Peter Drucker

Knowledge is the source of Wealth. Applied to tasks we already know, it becomes Productivity. Applied to tasks that are new, it becomes Innovation ... — Peter Drucker

When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course. — Peter F. Drucker

Peter Drucker said, "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."2 — Eric Ries

Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake. — Peter Drucker

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

Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs. — Peter Drucker

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

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

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

The new information technology ... Internet and e-mail ... have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications. — Peter Drucker

The final test of greatness in a CEO is how well he chooses a successor and whether he can step aside and let the successor run the company. — Peter Drucker

a decision without an alternative is a desperate gambler's throw, — Peter F. Drucker

The only industries that function well are the industries that take responsibility for training. The Japanese, you know, assume that when you first come to work you know absolutely nothing. School isn't preparation for work and never was. — Peter Drucker

What managers decide to stop doing is often more important than what they decide to do. — Peter Drucker

Because knowledge rapidly deteriorates unless it is used constantly, maintaining within an organization an activity that is used only intermittently guarantees incompetence. — Peter Drucker

Listening is not a skill; it is a discipline. — Peter Drucker

There is the general belief that the corporation income tax is a tax on the "rich" and on the "fat cats." But with pension funds owning 30% of American large business-and soon to own 50%-the corporation income tax, in effect, eases the load on those in top income brackets and penalizes the beneficiaries of pension funds. — Peter Drucker

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

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

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. — Peter Drucker

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

Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time. — Peter Drucker

The most valuable assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable assets of a 21st-century institution, whether business or nonbusiness, will be its knowledge, workers, and their productivity. — Peter Drucker

Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer meetings the better. — Peter Drucker

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. — Peter Drucker

If you have more than five goals, you have none. — Peter Drucker

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

The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that results exist only on the outside.The result of a business is a satisfied customer. The result of a hospital is a satisfied patient. The result of a school is a student who has learned something and puts it to work ten years later. Inside an enterprise there are only costs. — Peter Drucker

Our society has become an employee society. — Peter Drucker

The best way to predict the future is to create it. — Peter Drucker

Objectives are not commands; they are commitments. — Peter Drucker

Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes. — Peter F. Drucker

It's more important to do the right thing than to do things right. — Peter Drucker

My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions. — Peter Drucker

Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future. — Peter Drucker

Political freedom is neither easy nor automatic, neither pleasant nor secure. It is the responsibility of the individual for the decisions of society as if they were his own decisions-as
in moral truth and accountability they are. — Peter Drucker

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

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

More than twenty years ago, Peter Drucker described managers as "relays - human boosters for the faint, unfocused signals that pass for information in the traditional, pre-information organization. — Peter Miller

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

No executive has ever suffered because his subordinates were strong and effective. — Peter Drucker

It is willingness of people to give of themselves over and above the demands of the job that distinguishes the great from the merely adequate. — Peter Drucker

There is every indication that the period ahead will be an innovative one, one of rapid change in technology , society , economy , and institutions . — Peter Drucker

Never underrate the boss! The boss may look illiterate. He may look stupid. But there is no risk at all in overrating a boss. If you underrate him he will bitterly resent it or impute to you the deficiency in brains and knowledge you imputed to him. — Peter Drucker

There is a point at which a transformation has to take place. — Peter Drucker

Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right. — Peter Drucker

Tomorrow everybody - or practically everybody - will have had the education of the upper class of yesterday, and will expect equivalent opportunities. That is why we face the problem of making every kind of job meaningful and capable of satisfying every educated man. — Peter Drucker

Every organization has to prepare for the abandonment of everything it does. — Peter Drucker

Management must take the lead in making obsolete its own products and services rather than waiting for a competitor to do so. — Peter Drucker

To make a living is no longer enough. Work also has to make a life. — Peter Drucker

Businesses are not paid to reform customers. They are paid to satisfy customers. — Peter Drucker

The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present, the decline will be fast. — Peter Drucker

The only skill that will be important in the 21st century is the skill of learning new skills.Everythi ng else will become obsolete over time. — Peter Drucker

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

There's an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job. — Peter Drucker

Change is the norm; unless an organization sees that its task is to lead change, that organization will not survive. — Peter Drucker

Knowledge is being applied to knowledge itself. It is now fast becoming the one factor in production, sidelining both capital and labour. — Peter Drucker

I find more and more executives less and less well informed about the outside world, if only because they believe that the data on the computer printouts are ipso facto information. — Peter Drucker

Do not believe that it is very much of an advance to do the unnecessary three times as fast. — Peter Drucker

Unless strategy evaluation is performed seriously and systematically, and unless strategists are willing to act on the results, energy will be used up defending yesterday. — Peter Drucker

We have tried to substitute mass for purpose. We have tried to regain military potency of defense by making it gigantic, unwieldy, complex. It never works. — Peter Drucker

There are usually half a dozen right answers to what needs to be
done. Yet, unless a person makes the risky and controversial choice of only one, he will achieve nothing. — Peter Drucker

Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level. — Peter Drucker

The most effective way to manage change is to create it. — Peter Drucker

Leadership is all about getting results. — Peter Drucker

Wherever an impact can be eliminated by dropping the activity that causes it, this is therefore the best-indeed the only truly good-solution. — Peter Drucker

Leaders grow; they are not made. — Peter Drucker

The first step toward making the worker achieving is to make work productive. — Peter Drucker

There is the risk you cannot afford to take, [and] there is the risk you cannot afford not to take. PETER DRUCKER — Julia Cameron

You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable. — Peter Drucker

A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure. — Peter Drucker

Every success creates new opportunities. So does every failure. — Peter Drucker

The young knowledge worker whose job is too small to challenge and test his abilities either leaves or declines rapidly into premature middle age, soured, cynical, unproductive. — Peter Drucker

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done. — Peter Drucker

No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil. — Peter Drucker

People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs. — Peter Drucker

Absolute size by itself is no indicator of success and achievement, let alone of managerial competence. Being the right size is. — Peter Drucker

If you can't measure it, you can't change it. — Peter Drucker

Once the facts are clear the decisions jump out at you. — Peter Drucker

There are no creeds in mathematics. — Peter Drucker

Do first things first, and second things not at all. — Peter Drucker