Peter Drucker Quotes

There are just two questions to ask to attain success in business: First, "What business am I in?" Second, "How's business?"

In most organizations, the bottleneck is at the top of the bottle.

Leadership is defined by results not attributes.

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.

Making changes to better appeal to customer is INNOVATION.

Tomorrow always arrives. It is always different. And even the mightiest company is in trouble if it has not worked on the future. Being surprised by what happens is a risk that even the largest and richest company cannot afford, and even the smallest business need not run.

We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.

The talk you hear about adapting to change is not only stupid, it's dangerous. The only way you can manage change is to create it.

The need to manage oneself is creating a revolution in human affairs.

Everything must degenerate into work if anything is to happen.

Leadership is not rank, privileges, title or money. It is responsibility.

Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.

A manager's task is to make the strengths of people effective and their weakness irrelevant - and that applies fully as much to the manager's boss as it applies to the manager's subordinates.

Systematic decision review also shows executives their own weaknesses, particularly the areas in which they are simply incompetent. In these areas, smart executives don't make decisions or take actions. They delegate.

What we are good at comes easy, and we believe that unless it comes hard, it can't be very good.

Far too much reorganization goes on all the time. Organizitis is like a spastic colon.

Don't take on things you don't believe in and that you yourself are not good at. Learn to say no. Effective leaders match the objective needs of their company with the subjective competencies. As a result, they get an enormous amount of things done fast.

A business is not defined by its name, statutes, or articles of incorporation. It is defined by the business mission. Only a clear definition of the mission and purpose of the organization makes possible clear and realistic business objectives.

Leaders grow; they are not made.

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

Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a specialized activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer's point of view.

With Christianity, freedom and equality became the two basic concepts of Europe; they are themselves Europe.

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.

An effective executive builds on strengths - their own strengths, the strengths of superiors, colleagues, subordinates, and on the strength of the situation.

Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service.

Do not measure your life by your goals but what you are doing to achieve them.

Leadership is all hype. We've had three great leaders in this century-Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.

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

Innovative efforts should never report to line managers charged with responsibility for ongoing operations. The new project is an infant and will remain one for the foreseeable future, and infants belong in the nursery. The 'adults', that is, the executives in charge of existing businesses or products will have neither the time nor understanding for the infant.

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

The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him.

In business school classrooms they construct wonderful models of a non- world.

The purpose of information is not knowledge. It is being able to take the right action.

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.

Innovation requires us to systematically identify changes that have already occurred in a business - in demographics, in values, in technology or science - and then to look at them as opportunities. It also requires something that is most difficult for existing companies to do: to abandon rather than defend yesterday.

Our most important education system is in the employees' own organization.

All companies are service companies; some also manufacture products.

Change is the norm; unless an organization sees that its task is to lead change, that organization will not survive.

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

An institution which is financed by a budget - or which enjoys a monopoly which the customer cannot escape - is rewarded for what it deserves rather than what it earns. It is paid for 'good intentions' and 'programs'. It is paid for not alienating important constituents rather than satisfying any one group. It is misdirected by the way it is being paid into defining performance and results as what will produce the budget rather than as what will produce contribution.

Objectives can be compared to a compass bearing by which a ship navigates. A compass bearing is firm, but in actual navigation, a ship may veer off its course for many miles. Without a compass bearing, a ship would neither find its port nor be able to estimate the time required to get there.

Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two - and only these two — basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are 'costs'.

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.

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

Cultivate a deep understanding of yourself - not only what your strengths and weaknesses are but also how you learn, how you work with others, what your values are, and where you can make the greatest contribution. Because only when you operate from strengths can you achieve true excellence.

Knowledge is power, which is why people who had it in the past often tried to make a secret of it. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not from hiding it.

Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business. It can be justified only as being good for society.

Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.