Peter Drucker Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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.

The most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than the right question.

The organization is, above all, social. It is people.

Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.

One cannot hire a hand; the whole man always comes with it.

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

I have been saying for many years that we are using the word 'guru' only because 'charlatan' is too long to fit into a headline.

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

In most organizations, the bottleneck is at the top of the bottle.

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

We have only one alternative: either to build a functioning industrial society or see freedom itself disappear in anarchy and tyranny.

Unless the power of the corporation can be organized on an accepted principle of legitimacy, it will be taken over by a Central government

The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.

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.

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

One reason for the tremendous increase in health-care costs in the U.S. is managerial neglect of the "hotel services" by the people who dominate the hospital, such as doctors and nurses.

Ideas are cheap and abundant; what is of value is the effective placement of those ideas into situations that develop into action.

The purpose of an organization is to enable ordinary humans beings to do extraordinary things.

It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem - which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.

(Waste = Loss): The first rule of business is to survive and the guiding principle of business economics is not the maximisation of profit, it is the avoidance of loss

If you want to predict the future create it.

To be a manager requires more than a title, a big office, and other outward symbols of rank. It requires competence and performance of a high order.

An effective executive builds on strengths - their own strengths, the strengths of superiors, colleagues, subordinates, and on the strength of the situation.

The individual is the central, rarest, most precious capital resource of our society.

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.

Planning is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy. Planning is the kiss of death of entrepreneurship.

Success? Odd as it seems, you will achieve the greates results in business and career if you drop the word 'achievement' from your vocabulary and replace it with 'contribution'.

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

No one has ever failed to find the facts they are looking for.

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

The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.

The question that faces the strategic decision maker is not what his organisation should do tomorrow. It is, what do we have to do today to be ready for an uncertain tomorrow?

The most probable assumption is that no currently working 'business theory' will be valid 10 years hence.

Objectives are not commands; they are commitments.

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

Entrepreneurs believe that profit is what matters most in a new enterprise. But profit is secondary. Cash flow matters most.

As to the idea that advertising motivates people, remember the Edsel.

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

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

Everything must degenerate into work if anything is to happen.

That knowledge has become the resource, rather than a resource, is what makes our society "post-capitalist.

An established company which, in an age demanding innovation, is not able to innovation, is doomed to decline and extinction.

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

Education can no longer be the sole property of the state.

Nobody in the world is as good at making decisions as the Japanese.

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