Peter Drucker Quotes

11/19/1909-11/11/2005:
Peter Ferdinand Drucker was a writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist.” Widely considered to be the father of “modern management,” his 39 books and countless articles explored how people are organized across business, government and nonprofits. His works have predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century, including privatization and decentralization; the rise of Japan to economic world power; the decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning. In 1959, Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker.”

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

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The computer is a moron.

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The critical factor of a problem is the element that has to be changed before anything else can be changed.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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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.

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

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The purpose of a business is to create a customer.

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The success and ultimately the survival of every business, large or small, depends in the last analysis on its ability to develop people. This ability is not measured by any of our conventional yardsticks of economic success; yet, is the final measurement.

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

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

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

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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What managers decide to stop doing is often more important than what they decide to do.

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

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

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

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

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A business exists because the consumer is willing to pay you his money. You run a business to satisfy the consumer. That isn't marketing. That goes way beyond marketing.

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

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

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

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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.

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

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During periods of discontinuous, abrupt change, the essence of adaptation involves a keen sensitivity to what should be abandoned — not what should be changed or introduced. A willingness to depart from the familiar has distinct survival value.

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Economists think the poor need to tell them that they are poor.

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

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Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.

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

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

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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.'

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

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If a business is to be considered a continuous process, instead of a series of disjointed stop-and-go events, then the economic universe in which a business operates—and all the major events within it—must have rhyme, rhythm, or reason.

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

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

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Leadership is not magnetic personality — that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not 'making friends and influencing people' — that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

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Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.

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

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

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Management is not being brilliant. Management is being conscientious.

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'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.

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

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

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

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Never mind your happiness; do your duty.

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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.

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No organization can depend on genius; the supply is always scarce and unreliable. It is the test of an organization to make ordinary human beings perform better than they seem capable of, to bring out whatever strength there is in its members, and to use each man's strength to help all the others perform. The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.

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One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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

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Since we live in an age of innovation, a practical education must prepare a man for work that does not yet exist and cannot yet be clearly defined.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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