Peter Drucker Quotes
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Organizationally what is required - and evolving - is systems management.
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A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure.
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Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion. And it has been proven as much of an illusion in Stalinist Russia as it proven an illusion in pre-Hitler Germany. Communism in anything but name was abandoned in Russia when the Five-Year Plan was substituted for the New Economic Policy (NEP) after Lenin’s death.
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Decisions exist only in the present.
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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 ‘total state’ of fascism is not a political alignment within the existing political and social setup, but that it is a revolution which, like all revolutions, works from without.
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Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.
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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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Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
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Once a year ask the boss, 'What do I or my people do that helps you to do your job?' and 'What do I or my people do that hampers you?'
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The best way to predict the future is to create it.
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The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
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The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
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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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A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.
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The first step toward making the worker achieving is to make work productive.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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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.'
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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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The tool user, provided the tool is made well, need not, and indeed should not, know anything about the tool.