Top 10 Most Famous Peter F. Drucker Quotes
There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.
— Peter Drucker
Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.
— Peter Drucker
What gets measured gets improved.
— Peter Drucker
So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.
— Peter Drucker
Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.
— Peter Drucker
If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.
— Peter Drucker
Results are gained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.
— Peter Drucker
Meetings are by definition a concession to a deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.
— Peter Drucker
Long-range planning does not deal with the future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.
— Peter 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 Drucker
Inspirational Peter F. Drucker Quotes about Management and Leadership
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.
— Peter F. Drucker
The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.
— Peter F. Drucker
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
— Peter F. Drucker
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.
— Peter F. Drucker
The relevant question is not simply what shall we do tomorrow, but rather what shall we do today in order to get ready for tomorrow.
— Peter F. Drucker
Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.
— Peter F. Drucker
The key to greatness is to look for people’s potential and spend time developing it.
— Peter F. Drucker
The only skill that will be important in the 21st century is the skill of learning new skills. Everything else will become obsolete over time.
— Peter F. Drucker
The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” get the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.
— Peter F. Drucker
The only real difference between one organization and another is the performance of its people.
— 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
If you can’t measure it, you can’t change it.
— 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
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
— Peter F. Drucker
Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person – hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre – into an outstanding performer.
— Peter F. Drucker
There is nothing worse than doing the wrong thing well.
— Peter F. Drucker
The bеѕt wау tо predict уоur future іѕ tо create it.
— Peter F. Drucker
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
— Peter F. Drucker
Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.
— Peter F. Drucker
The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.
— Peter F. Drucker
Profit for a company is like oxygen for a person. If you don’t have enough of it, you’re out of the game. But if you think your life is about breathing, you’re really missing something.
— Peter F. Drucker
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
— Peter F. Drucker
The leader of the past was a person who knew how to tell. The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.
— Peter F. Drucker
Most leaders don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.
— Peter F. Drucker
The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths so strong that it makes the system’s weaknesses irrelevant.
— Peter F. Drucker
An employer has no business with a man’s personality. Employment is a specific contract calling for a specific performance… Any attempt to go beyond that is usurpation. It is immoral as well as an illegal intrusion of privacy. It is an abuse of power. An employee owes no “loyalty,” he owes no “love” and no “attitudes” – he owes performance and nothing else. The task is not to change personality, but to enable a person to achieve and to perform.
— Peter F. Drucker
If you have more than five goals, you have none.
— Peter F. Drucker
The purpose of information is not knowledge. It is being able to take the right action.
— Peter F. Drucker
As a manager you’re paid to be uncomfortable. If you’re comfortable, it’s a sure sign you’re doing things wrong.
— Peter F. Drucker
A man should never be appointed into a managerial position if his vision focuses on people’s weaknesses rather than on their strengths.
— Peter F. Drucker
In todays economy, the most important resource is no longer labor, capital or land; it is knowledge.
— Peter F. Drucker
More Best Peter Drucker Quotes
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
— Peter Drucker
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
— Peter Drucker
Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
— Peter Drucker
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
— Peter 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 Drucker
Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.
— Peter Drucker
When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
— Peter 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 Drucker
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
— Peter Drucker
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
— Peter Drucker
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
— Peter 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 Drucker
The new information technology… Internet and e-mail… have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.
— Peter Drucker
My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.
— Peter 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 Drucker
The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
— Peter Drucker
Manners are the lubricating oil of an organization. It is a law of nature that two moving bodies in contact with each other create friction. This is as true for human beings as it is for inanimate objects.
— Peter Drucker
Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
— Peter Drucker
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
— Peter Drucker
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
— Peter Drucker
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes… but no plans.
— Peter Drucker
The computer is a moron.
— Peter Drucker
Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.
— Peter Drucker
Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.
— Peter Drucker
Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.
— Peter Drucker
Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer.
— Peter Drucker
Business, that’s easily defined – it’s other people’s money.
— Peter 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 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 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 Drucker
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
— Peter 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 Drucker
Never mind your happiness; do your duty.
— Peter Drucker
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
— Peter Drucker
The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
— Peter Drucker
If analysis shows that someone’s brilliant work fails again and again as soon as cooperation from others is required, it probably indicates a lack of courtesy – that is, a lack of manners.
— Peter Drucker
A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.
— Peter 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 Drucker
