Peter Drucker Quotes
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It has been said, and only half in jest, that a tough, professionally led union is a great force for improving management performance. It forces the manager to think about what he is doing and to be able to explain his actions and behavior.
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There is a definite trend in Italy and Germany to eliminate profit participation and the ownership rights of nonmanaging partners and shareholders.
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Decisions exist only in the present.
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Political freedom is neither easy nor automatic, neither pleasant nor secure. It is the responsibility of the individual for the decisions of society as if they were his own decisions-as in moral truth and accountability they are.
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To be a manager requires more than a title, a big office, and other outward symbols of rank. It requires competence and performance of a high order.
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The first step toward making the worker achieving is to make work productive.
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The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
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We have only one alternative: either to build a functioning industrial society or see freedom itself disappear in anarchy and tyranny.
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Financial 'synergy' is a will-o'-the-wisp.It looks good on paper, but it fails to work out in practice.
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Absolute size by itself is no indicator of success and achievement, let alone of managerial competence. Being the right size is.
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The arts alone give direct access to experience. To eliminate them from education - or worse, to tolerate them as cultural ornaments - is antieducational obscurantism. It is foisted on us by the pedants and snobs of Hellenistic Greece who considered artistic performance fit only for slaves...
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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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So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
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Keep the boss aware. Bosses, after all, are held responsible by their own bosses for the performance of their subordinates. They must be able to say: 'I know what Anne or John is trying to do.'
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All economic activity is by definition 'high risk.' And defending yesterday-that is, not innovating-is far more risky than making tomorrow.
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The best way to predict the future is to create it.
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Morale in an organization does not mean that 'people get along together'; the test is performance not conformance.
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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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...what's absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people. There is no excuse for it. No justification. This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we will pay a heavy price for it.
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A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure.
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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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The tool user, provided the tool is made well, need not, and indeed should not, know anything about the tool.
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For if this country... were to make its defense program a function of its domestic employment situation, it would become impossible to conduct a constructive and well-thought out foreign policy or to develop any lasting collaboration.
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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.'