Peter Drucker Quotes

The only skill that will be important in the 21st century is the skill of learning new skills.Everythi ng else will become obsolete over time.

The new always looks so puny-so unpromising-next to the reality of the massive, ongoing business.

(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

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.

Nobody can predict the future; the idea is to have a firm grasp of the present.

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

Organizations are no longer built on force, but on trust.

Some of the best business and nonprofit CEOs I've worked with over a sixty-five-year consulting career were not stereotypical leaders. They were all over the map in terms of their personalities, attitudes, values, strengths, and weaknesses.

Adversarial power relationships only work if you never have to see or work with the bastards again.

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

Growth that adds volume without improving productivity is fat. Growth that diminishes productivity is cancer.

Not to innovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing organizations. Not to know how to manage is the single largest reason for the failure of new ventures.

Leadership is more doing than dash.

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.

What the customer buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility, that is, what a product or a service does for the customer.

It's more important to do the right thing than to do things right.

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

Production is not the application of tools to materials, but logic to work.

Objectives are not commands; they are commitments.

Plans are worthless, but planning is invaluable.

Listening is not a skill; it is a discipline.

"Plastic moments" are those periods that overlap when the old has gone but the new has not yet arrived and when the course of history is more open to being shaped and steered than any other time.

Most executives have learned that what one postpones, one actually abandons ... timing is a most important element in the success of any effort. To do five years later what would have been smart to do five years earlier, is almost a sure recipe for frustration and failure.

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

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

They wrongly believe that good intentions move mountains. Bulldozers move mountains. But there are exceptions.

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.

Profit is not a cause but a result-

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

To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.

The fewer data needed, the better the information. And an overload of information, that is, anything much beyond what is truly needed, leads to information blackout. It does not enrich, but impoverishes.

In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time - literally - substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.

Never underrate the boss! The boss may look illiterate. He may look stupid. But there is no risk at all in overrating a boss. If you underrate him he will bitterly resent it or impute to you the deficiency in brains and knowledge you imputed to him.

I would hope that American managers-indeed, managers worldwide-continue to appreciate what I have been saying almost from day one: that management is so much more than exercising rank and privilege, that it is much more than "making deals." Management affects people and their lives.

No other area offers richer opportunities for successful innovation than the unexpected success.

The experience of the human race indicates strongly that the only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetent.

Elephants have a hard time adapting. Cockroaches outlive everything.

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

Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.

In the knowledge economy everyone is a volunteer, but we have trained our managers to manage conscripts.

To survive and succeed, every organization will have to turn itself into a change agent

Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.

Listening (the first competence of leadership) is not a skill, it is a discipline. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut.

The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present, the decline will be fast.

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

The leader sees leadership as responsibility rather than as rank and privilege.

Profit is not the purpose of a business, but rather the test of its validity

Everything requires time. It is the only truly universal condition. All work takes place in time and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable, and necessary resource. Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.