Peter Drucker Quotes

“If you have too many problems, maybe you should get out of business. There is no law that says a company must last forever.”

“You must accept that if the computer is a tool, it is the job of tool user to know what to use it for.”

“The manager is a servant. His master is the institution he manages and his first responsibility must therefore be to it.”

“There is a point at which a transformation has to take place.”

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

“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.”

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

“Keep the boss aware. Bosses, after all, are held responsible by their own bosses for the performance of their subordinates. They must be able to say: "I know what Anne [or John] is trying to do."”

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”

“Leaders shouldn?t attach moral significance to their ideas: Do that, and you can?t compromise.”

“You cannot build performance on weaknesses. You can build only on strengths.”

“We do not need more laws . No country suffers from a shortage of laws. We need a new model .”

“Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a specialized activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer's point of view.”

“As a rule we perceive what we expect to perceive... The unexpected is usually not received 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.”

“Luck never built a business. Prosperity and growth come only to the business that systematically finds and exploits its potential.”

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

“Concentration is the key to economic results. No other principle of effectiveness is violated as constantly today as the basic principle of concentration.... Our motto seems to be, "Let's do a little bit of everything."”

“If you want to predict the future create it.”

“In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time - literally - substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.”

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

“Ideas are somewhat like babies - they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company executives do not say, "This is a damn-fool idea." Instead they ask, "What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?"”

“Communication always makes demands. It always demands that the recipient become somebody, do something, believe something. It always appeals to motivation.”

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

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

“No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone's work assignment and responsibility.”

“The knowledge we now consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information effective in action, information focused on results. Results are outside the person, in society and economy, or in the advancement of knowledge itself. To accomplish anything this knowledge has to be highly specialized.”

“Never ask who's right. Start out by asking what is right. And you find that out by listening to dissenting, disagreeing opinions.”

“Making changes to better appeal to customer is INNOVATION.”

“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?"”

“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.”

“In the managerial organization, the top people sit in judgment; in the innovative organization it is their job to encourage ideas, no matter how unripe or crude.”

“[Entrepreneurship] is by no means hunch or gamble. But it also is not precisely science. Rather, it is judgment.”

“There is one qualification the manager cannot acquire but must bring to the task. It is not genius; it is character.”

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

“Leadership is not rank, privileges, title or money. It is responsibility.”

“Top management as a function and as a structure was first developed by Georg von Siemens (1839-1901) in Germany between 1870 and 1880, when he designed and built the Deutsche Bank and made it, within a very few years, into continental Europe's leading and most dynamic financial institution.”

“The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.”

“Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person - hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre - into an outstanding performer.”

“Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization. For one either meets or one works.”

“They wrongly believe that good intentions move mountains. Bulldozers move mountains. But there are exceptions.”

“Our most important education system is in the employees' own organization.”

“Business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The tool user, provided the tool is made well, need not, and indeed should not, know anything about the tool.”

“No organization can depend on genius; the supply is always scarce and unreliable. It is the test of an organization to make ordinary people perform better than they seem capable of, to bring out whatever strength there is in its members, and to use each person's strength to help all the other members perform.”

“Increasingly, politics is not about "who gets what, when, how" but about values, each of them considered to be absolute. Politics is about "the right to life"...It is about the environment. It is about gaining equality for groups alleged to be oppressed...None of these issues is economic. All are fundamentally moral.”