Top 598 Quotes & Sayings by Peter Drucker - Page 2

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 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.

Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two - and only these two — basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are 'costs'.

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.

In todays economy, the most important resource is no longer labor, capital or land; it is knowledge

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.

Most leaders don't need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.

Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer meetings the better.

The critical question is not "How can I achieve?" but "What can I contribute?"

The most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than the right question.

Do what you do best, and outsource the rest.

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.

The purpose of information is not knowledge. It is being able to take the right action.

Knowledge is the source of Wealth. Applied to tasks we already know, it becomes Productivity. Applied to tasks that are new, it becomes Innovation.

If there is any one secret of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.

The talk you hear about adapting to change is not only stupid, it's dangerous. The only way you can manage change is to create it.

Listening (the first competence of leadership) is not a skill, it is a discipline. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut.

Morale in an organization does not mean that "people get along together"; the test is performance not conformance.

A man should never be appointed into a managerial position if his vision focuses on people's weaknesses rather than on their strengths.

The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths so strong that it makes the system's weaknesses irrelevant.

Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.

The "non-profit" institution neither supplies goods or services not controls. Its "product" is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human-change agents. Their "product" is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether.

Focus on opportunities, not problems.

The key to greatness is to look for people's potential and spend time developing it.

There are two types of people in the business community: those who produce results and those who give you reasons why they didn't.

Our job in life is to make a positive difference, not prove we're right.

If you have more than five goals, you have none.

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.

If you want to improve how you manage time - stop doing what doesn't need to be done!

One cannot buy, rent or hire more time. The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up. There is no price for it. Time is totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday's time is gone forever, and will never come back. Time is always in short supply. There is no substitute for time. Everything requires time. All work takes place in, and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable and necessary resource.

No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.

Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity of the organization.

Do first things first, and second things not at all.

Marketing and innovation make money. Everything else is a cost.

Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.

The purpose of an organization is to enable ordinary humans beings to do extraordinary things.

As a manager you're paid to be uncomfortable. If you're comfortable, it's a sure sign you're doing things wrong.

You cannot build performance on weaknesses. You can build only on strengths.

Change is the norm; unless an organization sees that its task is to lead change, that organization will not survive.

The fruit of your work grows on other people's trees

In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time - literally - substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.

Don't solve problems. Pursue opportunities.

Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.

Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

Leadership is an achievement of trust.

The only real difference between one organization and another is the performance of its people.

Once the facts are clear the decisions jump out at you.

Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a specialized activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer's point of view.

We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don't spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop. Half the leaders I have met don't need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop

Strong people have strong weaknesses.

Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.

Management is not being brilliant. Management is being conscientious.

It's amazing how many things busy people are doing that never will be missed.

History has been written not by the most talented but by the most motivated.

The organization is, above all, social. It is people.

Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.

Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.

The job of a professional manager is not to like people. It is not to change people. It is to put their strengths to work.

The leader sees leadership as responsibility rather than as rank and privilege.

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.

Innovative efforts should never report to line managers charged with responsibility for ongoing operations. The new project is an infant and will remain one for the foreseeable future, and infants belong in the nursery. The 'adults', that is, the executives in charge of existing businesses or products will have neither the time nor understanding for the infant.