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Quotes by Peter F. Drucker


Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
– Peter F. Drucker
A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.
– Peter F. Drucker
Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.
– Peter F. Drucker
Borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
– Peter F. Drucker
Business, that's easily defined - it's other people's money.
– Peter F. Drucker
Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.
– Peter F. Drucker
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
– Peter F. Drucker
Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.
– Peter F. Drucker
Everybody has accepted by now that change is unavoidable. But that still implies that change is like death and taxes it should be postponed as long as possible and no change would be vastly preferable. But in a period of upheaval, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm.
– Peter F. Drucker
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.'
– Peter F. Drucker
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
– Peter F. Drucker
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
– Peter F. Drucker
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
– Peter F. Drucker
Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't.
– Peter F. Drucker
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
– Peter F. Drucker
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 F. Drucker
My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.
– Peter F. Drucker
Never mind your happiness; do your duty.
– Peter F. Drucker
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.
– Peter F. Drucker
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 F. Drucker
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
– Peter F. Drucker
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
– Peter F. Drucker
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
– Peter F. Drucker
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.
– Peter F. Drucker
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
– Peter F. Drucker
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
– Peter F. Drucker
The computer is a moron.
– Peter F. Drucker
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
– Peter F. Drucker
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.
– Peter F. Drucker
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
– Peter F. Drucker
The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
– Peter F. Drucker
There is an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job.
– Peter F. Drucker
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
– Peter F. Drucker
Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
– Peter F. Drucker
Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.
– Peter F. Drucker
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.
– Peter F. Drucker
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans.
– Peter F. Drucker
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.
– Peter F. Drucker
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 F. Drucker
When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
– Peter F. Drucker
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.
– Peter F. Drucker
Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
– Peter F. Drucker
Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.
– Peter F. Drucker
Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.
– Peter F. Drucker
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.
– Peter F. Drucker
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.
– Peter F. Drucker
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.
– Peter F. Drucker
The new information technology... Internet and e-mail... have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.
– Peter F. Drucker
The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.
– Peter F. Drucker
In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
– Peter F. Drucker
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
– Peter F. Drucker