Peter Drucker (1909–2005) was an Austrian-born American management consultant, author, and lecturer on the modern organization. He was the most influential management philosopher of the modern era.
Over a 60 year-career, Drucker influenced the thinking of many executives in businesses, not-for-profits, and faith-based organizations. He authored over forty books and numerous essays on managerial skills, management concepts, and social analyses. He has been globally hailed as a seminal thinker, writer, and lecturer on the contemporary organization.
Drucker wrote about concepts such as knowledge workers, decentralization, management by objectives, and so on decades before they were trendy. His writings are devoid of buzzwords and management jargon and easily resonate with his readers. His thoughts are today accepted as conventional wisdom; business school courses around the world require the reading of his books. His keen insight and unique style of expression in clear language continue to have a significant influence on many successful businesspersons and management consultants.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Peter Drucker
Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Quality
There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Mediocrity, Purpose, Goals, Effectiveness
But innovation is more than a new method. It is a new view of the universe, as one of risk rather than of chance or of certainty. It is a new view of man’s role in the universe; he creates order by taking risks. And this means that innovation, rather than being an assertion of human power, is an acceptance of human responsibility.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Change
Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilize the resources and energies of the business for the making of the future.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Commitment, Goals
Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Leadership
We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Motivational, Motivation
The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Management
Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Time
The corporation is the “master”, the employee is the “servant”. Because the corporation owns the means of production without which the employee could not make a living, the employee needs the corporation more than vice versa.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Capitalism
Building around mission and long-term goals is the only way to integrate shorter-term interests.
—Peter Drucker
What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it, that’s another matter.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Will Power, Willpower, Will
We greatly overestimate what we can accomplish in one year. But we greatly underestimate what we can accomplish in five years.
—Peter Drucker
The really important things are said over cocktails and are never done.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Communication
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Action
Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Time Management, Time
Time is the scarcest resource of the manager; If it is not managed, nothing else can be managed.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Time Management, Value, Time
Education can no longer be the sole property of the state.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Education
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.
—Peter Drucker
It’s more important to do the right thing than to do things right.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Integrity
Do the right things instead of trying to do everything right.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Perfectionism
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Past and Present, The Future, Change, Future
If results are our goal, they must also be our test.
—Peter Drucker
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.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Teamwork
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
—Peter Drucker
Entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. It is the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Innovation
More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.
—Peter Drucker
There are an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Stress
The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Knowledge
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
—Peter Drucker
Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.
—Peter Drucker
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