Peter Drucker Quotes

“We can't make people better by trying to eliminate their weaknesses, but we can help then perform better by building on their strengths.”

“The most important work of the executive is to identify the changes that have already happened. The important thing . . . is to exploit the changes that have already occurred and to use them as opportunities.”

“Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.”

“Effective innovations start small. They are not grandiose. They try to do one specific thing.”

“The basic definition of the business and of its purpose and mission have to be translated into objectives.”

“The leader of the past was a person who knew how to tell. The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.”

“People in any organization, including bureaucrats and politicians, are always attached to the obsolete; the obsolescent; the things that should have worked but didn't; the things that once were productive and no longer are.”

“If something fails despite being carefully planned, carefully designed, and conscientiously executed, that failure often bespeaks underlying change and, with it, opportunity.”

“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.”

“The computer, being a mechanical moron, can handle only quantifiable data.”

“Technology is not about tools, it deals with how Man works.”

“The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths so strong that it makes the system's weaknesses irrelevant.”

“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.”

“Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.”

“Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.”

“No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.”

“Decisions exist only in the present.”

“Every enterprise is learning and teaching institution. Training and development must be built into it on all levels, training and development that never stop.”

“You can't manage what you don't measure.”

“The key to greatness is to look for people's potential and spend time developing it.”

“It does not follow from the separation of planning and doing in the analysis of work that the planner and the doer should be two different people. It does not follow that the industrial world should be divided into two classes of people: a few who decide what is to be done, design the job, set the pace, rhythm and motions, and order others about; and the many who do what and as they are told.”

“The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.”

“Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.”

“Progress is obtained only by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems. When you solve problems, all you do is guarantee a return to normalcy.”

“An organization belongs on a sick list when promotion becomes more important to its people than accomplishment of their job they are in. It is sick when it is more concerned with avoiding mistakes than with taking risks, with counteracting the weaknesses of its members than with building on their strength. But it is sick also when "good human relations" become more important than performance and achievement.”