Peter Drucker Quotes

If you have more than five goals, you have none.

Economists think the poor need them to tell them that they are poor.

Growth that adds volume without improving productivity is fat. Growth that diminishes productivity is cancer.

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.

Many studies of research scientists have shown that achievement (at least below the genius level of an Einstein, Bohr, or a Planck) depends less on ability in doing research than on the courage to go after opportunity.

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.

Effective people are not problem minded; they're opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems. They think preventively.

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.

I'm a writer. I could not or would not ever run a business. I don't even have a secretary. And contrary to some of the stereotypes, entrepreneurs are not loners. I am.

Economists talk about profit motive, but nothing motivates modern man more than a chance to avoid taxes!

Strong people have strong weaknesses.

The fault is in the system and not in the men.

The real achiever do one thing at a time.

Of those things that would make a difference, which are right for me?

It takes far less energy to move from first-rate performance to excellence than it does to move from incompetence to mediocrity.

A management decision is irresponsible if it risks disaster this year for the sake of a grandiose future.

Don't try to innovate for the future. Innovate for the present!

If you're not living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space.The best way to predict the future is to create it.

The really important things are said over cocktails and are never done.

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.

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

Time is the scarcest resource.

Leadership is an achievement of trust.

Profit is not the purpose of a business, but rather the test of its validity

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

Work is an extension of personality. It is achievement. It is one of the ways in which a person defines himself, measures his worth, and his humanity.

What is the major problem? It is fundamentally the confusion between effectiveness and efficiency that stands between doing the right things and doing things right. There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.

The strength of the computer lies in its being a logic machine. It does precisely what it is programed to do. This makes it fast and precise. It also makes it a total moron; for logic is essentially stupid.

Profit is not a cause but a result-

Business, that's easily defined - it's other people's money.

Systematic change requires a willingness to look on change as an opportunity.

A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.

Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation.

No business can do everything. Even if it has the money, it will never have enough good people. It has to set priorities. The worst thing to do is a little bit of everything. This makes sure that nothing is being accomplished. It is better to pick the wrong priority than none at all.

There is nothing worse than doing the wrong thing well.

Mother Teresa's numerical results were not her greatest contribution. Instead, she made the world-and especially India-conscious of compassion.

The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.

Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't.

A man should never be appointed into a managerial position if his vision focuses on people's weaknesses rather than on their strengths.

Financial "synergy" is a will-o'-the-wisp.It looks good on paper, but it fails to work out in practice.

A manager sets objectives - A manager organizes - A manager motivates and communicates - A manager, by establishing yardsticks, measures - A manager develops people.

Leadership is all about getting results.

Too many leaders try to do a little bit of 25 things and get nothing done. They are very popular because they always say yes. But they get nothing done.

The paradox of the prophet: his very success is his failure. The prophet whose time has come no longer shocks; he entertains.

Successful leaders don't start out asking, 'What do I want to do?' They ask, 'What needs to be done?' Then they ask, 'Of those things that would make a difference, which are right for me?'

[Management] has authority only as long as it performs.

Inside an organization there are only cost centers. The only profit center is a customer whose check has not bounced.

The fruit of your work grows on other people's trees

The computer actually may have aggravated management's degenerative tendency to focus inward on costs.

Working with people is difficult, but not impossible.

There are only two things in a business that make money - innovation and marketing, everything else is cost.

Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.

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

The purpose of information is not knowledge. It is being able to take the right action.

Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability and to prevent, or at least slow down, change. But the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer. Because its function is to put knowledge to work - on tools, processes, and products; on work; on knowledge itself - it must be organized for constant change.

I would hope that American managers-indeed, managers worldwide-continue to appreciate what I have been saying almost from day one: that management is so much more than exercising rank and privilege, that it is much more than "making deals." Management affects people and their lives.

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.

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

Communication is always "propaganda." The emitter always wants "to get something across."