Peter Drucker

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

Charisma becomes the undoing of leaders. It makes them inflexible convinced of their own infallibility unable to change.

Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.

The purpose of a business is to create a customer.

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

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

Efficiency is doing things right effectiveness is doing the right things.

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans.

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

A business enterprise must continue beyond the lifetime of the individual or of the generation to be capable of producing its contributions to economy and to society.

The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder friction and malperformance.

Management is not being brilliant. Management is being conscientious.

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.

We can say with certainty - or 90% probability - that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to do with information.

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

Replace your pursuit of success with the pursuit of contribution.

People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs.

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

Promotion should not be more important than accomplishment, or avoiding instability more important than taking the right risk.

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

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

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.

Communism is evil. its driving force are the deadly sins of envy and hatred.

Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.

The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.

Balance Sheets are meaningless. Our accounting systems are still based on the assumption that 80% of costs are manual labor.

Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.

Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.

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

Erroneous assumptions can be disastrous.

The entrepreneur always searches for change responds to it and exploits it as an opportunity.

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

The essence of management is to make knowledge productive.

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

Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.

Business has only two functions marketing and innovation.

A superior who works on his own development sets an almost irresistible example.

When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.

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

Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.

There is a point of complexity beyond which a business is no longer manageable.

People who dont take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.

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

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hope... But no plans.

Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.

Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.

Never mind your happiness; do your duty.

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

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

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.

The enterprise can fulfill its human and social functions only if it prospers as a business.

Capitalism is being attacked not because it is inefficient or misgoverned but because it is cynical. And indeed a society based on the assertion that private vices become public benefits cannot endure no matter how impeccable its logic no matter how great its benefits.

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.

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.

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.

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

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

Plastic moments" are those periods that overlap when the old has gone but the new has not yet arrived and when the course of history is more open to being shaped and steered than any other time.

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

Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.

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

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

People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.

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

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

Teamwork is neither "good" nor "desirable." It is a fact. Wherever people work together or play together they do so as a team. Which team to use for what purpose is a crucial, difficult and risky decision that is even harder to unmake. Managements have yet to learn how to make it.

Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.

Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.

Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.

What we need is an entrepreneurial society in which innovation and entrepreneurship are normal steady and continuous.

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.

There is nothing less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.

Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations... They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them 'operators' or 'programmers.'

Management by objectives works if you first think through your objectives. Ninety percent of the time you haven't.

A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.

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.

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

The enterprise by definition must be capable of producing more or better than all the resources that comprise it.

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

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.

Long-range planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.

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

Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.

The computer is a moron.

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 aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.

Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business. It can be justified only as being good for society.

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

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isnt said.

Efficiency which is doing things right is irrelevant until you work on the right things.

Morale in an organization does not mean that a people get along together; the test is performance not conformance.

The job of a professional manager is not to like people. It is not to change people. It is to put their strengths to work.

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

What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it is another matter.