Peter Drucker Quotes

Look at government programs for the past fifty years. Every single one - except warfare - achieved the exact opposite of its announced goal.

Yet there is nothing more dangerous than to be premature in exploiting a change in perception.

Successful people know they need to get many things done-and done effectively. Therefore, they concentrate their time and energy on doing one thing at a time-and on doing first things firs.

All earlier pluralist societies destroyed themselves because no one took care of the common good. They abounded in communities but could not sustain community, let alone create it.

The Welfare State, which begun in Imperial Germany for the truly indigent and disabled, has now become "everybody's entitlement" and an increasing burden on those who produce.

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

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

The single minded ones, the monomaniacs, are the only true achievers

Quality of character doesn't make a leader, but the lack of it flaws the entire process.

Any time I have seen someone accomplishing something magnificent, they have been a monomaniac with a mission. A single-minded individual with a passion.

The Pertinent Question is NOT how to do things right - but how to find the right things to do, and to concentrate resources and efforts on them.

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

Effective organizations put people in jobs in which they can do the most good. They place people -- and allow people to place themselves -- according to their strengths.

It is commonly believed that innovations create changes - but few ever do. Successful innovations exploit changes that have already happened.

Profit is not the explanation, cause, or rationale of business behavior and business decisions, but the test of their validity.

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

A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure.

When a resource is scarce, you increase its yield.

If war production should remain the only way out of a long-term depression, industrial society would be reduced to the choice between suicide through total war or suicide through total depression.

If a manager spends more than 10 percent of his time on "human relations" the group is probably too large.

Without institution there is no management. But without management there is no institution.

Leadership is more doing than dash.

An executive should be a realist; and no one is less realistic than the cynic.

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

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

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

The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is ... to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker

Organizationally what is required - and evolving - is systems management.

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

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

Managing innovation will increasingly become a challenge to management, and especially to top management, and a touchstone of its competence.

Schools will change more in the next 30 years than they have since the invention of the printed book.

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

Miracles are great, but they're so damn unpredictable.

It is better to pick the wrong priority than none at all.

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

Leadership is all about getting results.

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."

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

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

In a rural society communities are "given" for the individual. Community is a fact, whether family or religion, social class or caste.

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

In book subjects a student can only do a student's work. All that can be measured is how well he learns, rather than how well he performs. All he can show is promise.

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

A fundamental responsibility of leadership is make sure that everybody knows the mission, understands it, lives it.

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

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

The final test of greatness in a CEO is how well he chooses a successor and whether he can step aside and let the successor run the company.

The race for Quality has no finish line - so technically, it's more like a death march. Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.