Peter Drucker Quotes
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We will have to learn to lead people rather then to contain them.
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Growth as a goal, to repeat, is delusion. William James, the American philosopher, talked of the 'bitch goddess success.' A philosopher of business today might well talk of the 'bitch goddess growth.'
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It is better to pick the wrong priority than none at all.
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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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Executives do many things in addition to making decisions. But only executives make decisions. The first managerial skill is, therefore, the making of effective decisions.
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One cannot hire a hand; the whole man always comes with it.
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'Loafing' is easy, but 'leisure' is difficult.
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The major incentive to productivity and efficiency are social and moral rather than financial.
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The world political system is till based on the concept of the national sovereign state. For the first time therefore, in three hundred years economy and sovereignty are becoming divorced from each other.
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'Value added' is a meaningless concept for a retail business , for a bank, for a life insurance company, and for any other business which is not primarily engaged in manufacturing.
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And no matter how serious an environmental problem the automobile poses in today's big city, the horse was dirtier, smelled worse, killed and maimed more people, and congested the streets just as much.
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If 'socialism' is defined as 'ownership of the means of production'-and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition-then the United States is the first truly Socialist country.
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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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Communication is always 'propaganda.' The emitter always wants 'to get something across.'
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Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it.
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Management has authority only as long as it performs.
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Tomorrow everybody - or practically everybody - will have had the education of the upper class of yesterday, and will expect equivalent opportunities. That is why we face the problem of making every kind of job meaningful and capable of satisfying every educated man.
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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
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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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The fundamental reality for every worker, from sweeper to executive vice-president, is the eight hours or so that he spends on the job. In our society of organizations, it is the job through which the great majority has access to achievement, to fulfillment, and to community.
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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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No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil.
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Equally striking is the fact that racial anti-Semitism was not taken seriously even by the great majority of Nazis. ‘It is just a catchword to attract voters’ was a standing phrase which everybody repeated and believed, and that I took it seriously was more than once regarded as definite proof of my stupidity and gullibility.
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Top management as a function and as a structure was first developed by Georg von Siemens (1839-1901) in Germany between 1870 and 1880, when he designed and built the Deutsche Bank and made it, within a very few years, into continental Europe's leading and most dynamic financial institution.