When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Education
The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I”. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I”. They don’t think “I”. They think “we”; they think “team”. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit… This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.
—Peter Drucker
The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Management
Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folklore and superstition, and of cooperation for force…
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Management
Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Business, Decision
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Past and Present, Change, Future, The Future
There is an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Management, Retirement
Everything must degenerate into work if anything is to happen.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Work
There are times to face the fact that the organization as a whole is not performing-that there are weak results everywhere and little prospect of improving. It may be time to merge or liquidate and put your energies somewhere else.
—Peter Drucker
Building around mission and long-term goals is the only way to integrate shorter-term interests.
—Peter Drucker
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
If results are our goal, they must also be our test.
—Peter Drucker
Concentration is the key to economic results. No other principles of effectiveness is violated as constantly today as the basic principle of concentration.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Concentration, Effectiveness
Information is, above all, a principle of economy. The fewer data needed, the better the information. An overload of information leads to information blackout. It does not enrich, but impoverishes.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Information
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: The Future, Creativity, Future, Vision
It’s more important to do the right thing than to do things right.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Integrity
One cannot buy, rent or hire more time. The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up. There is no price for it. Time is totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday’s time is gone forever, and will never come back. Time is always in short supply. There is no substitute for time. Everything requires time. All work takes place in, and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable and necessary resource.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Time Management, Time
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
The better a man is the more mistakes he will make for the more things he will try.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Mistakes
Do the right things instead of trying to do everything right.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Perfectionism
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
—Peter Drucker
There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Purpose, Mediocrity, Goals, Effectiveness
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?”
—Peter Drucker
The honest work of yesterday has lost its social status, its social esteem.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Work
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.
—Peter Drucker
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Difficulty, Management
The computer is a moron.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Computers
What gets measured gets managed.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Age
Don’t try to innovate for the future. Innovate for the present!
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Future
No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone’s work assignment and responsibility.
—Peter Drucker
Topics: Action
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Peter Senge American Management Consultant
- Margaret J. Wheatley American Management Consultant
- Stephen Covey American Self-help Author
- Robin Sharma Canadian Writer, Motivational Speaker
- Tom Peters American Management Consultant
- Bruno Bettelheim Austrian-born Psychoanalyst
- Arnold Schwarzenegger Austrian-American Actor, Politician
- John Kotter American Management Consultant
- Warren Bennis American Management Consultant
- Seth Godin American Entrepreneur
Leave a Reply